Ten Habits

Jan

Susan Payton - Instructor, Marketer and More!

Angela’s Note – Susan Payton is the Managing Partner of Egg Marketing & Public Relations, an internet marketing firm specializing in blogger outreach, social media, and PR. She is also the blogger behind The Marketing Eggspert Blog. She’s written two books: 101 Entrepreneur Tips and Internet Marketing Strategies for Entrepreneurs, as well as several ecourses on marketing. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing. I met her at Type-A-Mom and have collaborated on an ecourse with her. Listen as she shares about continuing to GROW.

If you’re like me, you find it difficult to keep up with the changing times. I’m in marketing, so the fact that there’s a new social media tool coming out every five minutes makes it very hard to stay on top of!

How do I do it?

I find people who are smarter than me and let them teach me. I:

Read blogs by experts
Attend webinars
Take online ecourses

I talk a lot on my blog and others about being an expert in your field. This is a necessity, but the other side of the coin is getting the knowledge you need to be that expert. Remember: there’s always someone more knowledgeable than you. Take that as a challenge to bone up on whatever it is you want to learn more about.

Blogs

So where do I get this knowledge? Since I’m looking for info on internet marketing, public relations and social media, I start with some of the best bloggers:

Chris Brogan’s Blog is a great source for the latest news and innovations as well as genuine reviews of tools and technology.
On Social Media Explorer, Jason Falls covers a nice range of topics, from public relations to social media.
Over on Drew’s Marketing Minute, Drew McLellan gives me great perspective on all things marketing.

Teleseminars

Occasionally I feel like sitting in on a teleseminar. They’re too numerous to name here, but I find having a strong presence on Facebook helps me get invited to some really great free seminars on marketing and entrepreneurship. If you have questions, joining a teleseminar is a great way to get answers from experts.

Ecourses

I also love taking ecourses at my leisure. I actually just launched The Marketing EggSchool to provide business owners with an easy way to learn marketing skills that will benefit their companies. Angela is teaching a course called How to Use Keywords to Drive Traffic for Businesses, so make sure you check it out! The great thing about ecourses is you can take them in your PJs and stop and start as many times as you like.

Your Turn!

So where do you get your inspiration and education? Please share with us so we can use it too!

Make a list of 5 to 10 resources you can use in 2010 to get smarter and brush up on your expert status. Add them to your calendar as to-dos to make sure you don’t forget to check them out!

PS Since you’re Angela’s friends, I want to offer you a special deal on courses at The Marketing EggSchool. Right now everything is just $10. This includes:

Setting Up a Facebook Page for Your Business
Marketing Your Facebook Page
How to Create Killer Press Releases
How to Use Keywords to Drive Traffic for Businesses
And More!

Jan

Wilderness Wallflowers and Drive-By Blogging – Ten Habits of Success Day 15

By AngEngland | Ten Habits

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Angela’s Note: I was trying to remember when I met Danny Brown and I couldn’t. I’m sure it was through Twitter so it must have been through a #journchat chat or one of the other chats I like to sit in on. Regardless of the when, I have found his advice and input to be engaging, challenging, informative and helpful. I hope you do too. Danny Brown encourages conversations about building community around emerging media. He is also founder of 12for12k, a social media-led charity initiative to connect globally and help locally. Follow Danny on Twitter at @DannyBrown.

Do you have on your dancing shoes? Then it's time to make blogging magic! Photo by Dez Pain

Remember high school and the awkwardness that came at end of year dances? If you weren’t part of the “in crowd”, you were the wilderness wallflowers – stood in the corner, nodding out of time to the DJ, and trying not to look like the lost, hopeless soul you were?

Are your blogging habits like that? It doesn’t matter if you’re a blogger or blog reader; are you the equivalent of a wilderness wallflower? Do you just write and forget, or read and move on? Are you drive-by blogging?

Don’t worry; we’ve all done it. Written without encouraging follow-up interaction, or left a blog behind that deserved our comments. But just because we have done it doesn’t mean we need to continue doing it.

Imagine if someone at the school dance had come up to you and asked you to dance. Or simply said you looked good. Imagine how much of a difference that would have made to you. So why not transfer that “would have” to “does” when it comes to your blogging habits?

Blogger Still Equals Reader

When you blog, the first person you should write for is you. This is the only way that true passion will come across, and the best blogs are the ones that are raw and true. Writing for you will keep it real, and your readers will appreciate it more.

Yet you also need to write with your readers in mind, to change them from wilderness wallflowers to budding oases. One of the biggest complaints that bloggers have is that they don’t receive enough comments; but are you encouraging them?

Make your post open-ended.
Tell a story, offer an opinion but don’t close the topic.
Leave room for further discussion.
End with a question or a call-to-action from your readers.

Thinking from a commenter’s point of view makes it more likely that you’ll begin to write posts in a way that encourages commenting. And the best ideas for new posts often come from the comments, not to mention the fact that comments build community.

From Lurker to Local

The other side of the wallflower coin is the drive-by commenter. Now, there’s nothing wrong per se with reading a blog and moving onto pastures new. But let’s step back for a minute and look at what happened when you read that blog.

Did you learn something new? Did it open your eyes to new possibilities? Did it touch you emotionally? Did it make you question your points of view?

The best bloggers instill a reaction from their readers. They make us question, and think, and react. They make us want to share our points of view and why theirs might not actually be the right one.

So why stay quiet? Why not open up and let the blogger know what you’re thinking? Be the person that goes up to the wallflower at the dance and tells them they look good. Ask for the dance. But make it a great dance.

Don’t just say “Great post.”
Don’t be afraid to disagree. No-one is right all the time. Not even Batman.
Leave questions of your own to encourage further dialogue.
Offer views on other comments.
Share resources to back up your views.

Bloggers write for themselves first, but they also write with their readers in mind. They want to culture community. They want to hear your views. They want you to have a voice, to challenge them. So do it.

The best blogs are the ones that have a vibrant community of disparate voices. They’re disparate because the blogger encourages discussion, and the reader is happy to open up.

So. Next time you’re finishing a post, either from a writing or a reading angle, think of the next step. Think of how the conversation can be extended. And think of all the benefits that this new openness can bring.

You might not get that dance with your high school crush, but you sure as heck can (and will) make the next dance better. Ready to stop being a wallflower?

Jan

Remember Your Value – Ten Habits Day 14

By AngEngland | Ten Habits

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Angela’s Note: Julie Roads stepped in last-minute to speak at a Problogging panel at Type-A-Mom Blog Conference with me last year, and in the process I discovered a kindred spirit. We both have very clear ideas about valuing ourselves as writers so I immediately thought of her to share with you. She ghostwrites, blogs for companies, speaks, consults and “thrives on helping you find your authentic voice & personal brand, and KEEP THEM, while you grow your business online and off.” Her company, Writing Roads, is a writing and marketing company that specializes in web content, blogs, social media and real relationship marketing.

Julie Roads - Problogging, Speaking, Consulting and More

Because it’s your job to do so, not anyone else’s

This is a tough one. Why? Because there are some things you need to pack for the trip to remembering-your-value-ville: Self-esteem, self-preservation and good old-fashioned self-respect. When you remember your value and ask others to recognize it, you are sticking up for yourself - to the nth degree. So fill your bag…and let’s go.

If you don’t place value on your work, other people will pick up on that. When you state your fee, don’t cower, don’t play small! Pull your shoulders down, puff out your chest a bit, let your voice be strong. “This is what I charge!!!”

Negotiations and Saying it Out Loud

Time and again, I’m asked to reduce my prices. And the asker is, essentially, telling me that he doesn’t think I’m worth what I originally asked him for, what I think I’m worth. But, I have to be honest – for a myriad of reasons, I will, in fact, lower my prices. When:

Work is slow (really slow)
I really like the client
The topic is important to me
The project is a new medium that I haven’t worked in previously and I want the experience and the line item on my resume
The possibilities for ongoing work with this client are high and vast (be careful here and be clear that you will lower your price only this once!)

But, I know people that will not reduce their fees no matter what. It’s a matter of worth and value – whether you lower them or whether you don’t. It’s your choice.

Here’s my rule of thumb to judge the value factor: When someone asks me to write a website for, say, $1000, I do two things:

I go stand in front of the mirror and I say, ‘I just got a job to write a website for $1,000.’
I call someone whose opinion (of me) matters and I say, again, ‘I just got a job to write a website for $1,000.’

And I watch my reaction in both cases. Am I proud? Am I embarrassed? Do I make excuses (about why it’s okay to except so little or to except so much)? Does my voice get quiet or loud? How do I feel about myself when I say it out loud?

It’s a check-in system. And it’s fairly foolproof. There is no avoiding that internal cringe system when you know that you are being devalued! When you know that you are devaluing yourself!

How do you know how valuable you are?

As a marketing copywriter, I do not charge by the hour, I charge by the project. This is because one of my mentors once told me, “I work twice as fast and charge three times as much as I did three years ago.” She believes in her value. Why should she take a hit in her fees because she’s fast and fantastic at what she does? Why should the fact that she’s three years better and three years faster lower her value? It shouldn’t! That makes no sense. Her value has undeniably increased!

You are valuable. Seriously, you’ve got it going on. It’s easy to see if you break it down.

Finding your value

To find your value, you need to sort through your history and add things up. Like a tab at a restaurant. List the following (literally on paper – do this for yourself):

Education (both formal and informal)
Experience (both formal and informal)
People you know
Resources you have at your finger tips
Skills
Personality traits (people person, creative, funny, patient, etc…)
That je ne sais quoi that only you have

Write it all down. All of these things make up your worth…and I bet your list is long.

Jan

The Slight Edge Principle for Bloggers – Ten Habits Day 13

By AngEngland | Ten Habits

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I love the book, the Slight Edge. It helps remind me that success isn’t a single huge feat of daring do. Far more often it is the little, consistent things that add to over time. It is those things which are easy to do. And easy to NOT do.

For example, it is easy to eat a salad for lunch. It is easy to NOT to eat that salad but drive through for a Big Mac instead. But which of those two actions will put me on the success side of a healthy lifestyle?

Time Adds Up – To Success or Failure?

The trickiest thing about the slight edge principle is that these things which add up to success (or failure) are so easy not to do because not doing them once usually has no perceivable negative consequence. Whew! That sounds complicated.

What I mean is this. Eating one Big Mac will not give you a heart attack, right? Otherwise they wouldn’t sell a billion of ‘em. But eating one Big Mac today. And another in a couple days. And another next week….times ten years. Twenty years. Presto! Heart attack!

The Line Between The Road to Failure and the Road to Success is Knife-Edge Small. Photo by Pam Roth

The Slight Edge is SMALL

It’s the small choices. The hardest to make choices. To post or not to post. To comment or not to comment. To tweet or not to tweet. The next article. The next brainstorming session. Turning off that one TV show to write instead. Small. Small choices. They add up to stunning successes or quiet failures depending on which side of the razor’s edge you place yourself.

Slight Edge for Bloggers

So for bloggers, the application is easy. Posting one post to your blog today will not make you a blogging success. Just like me ignoring my blog today wouldn’t make you all hate me. But those actions, added up over time, either consistently move me towards the success I desire, or consistently move me away it. And the choice is completely and totally mine. Choosing just one “success edge” action step for your blog each day means that just within a single year you’ll have hundreds of posts or incoming links to your site – Wow!

Questions -

How are you managing the slight edge principle? Are you waiting for a stunning, huge breakthrough event? Or are you placing yourself on the side of success with the every day, consistent actions you choose to take?

List three, small and doable actions that you will begin incorporating on a daily or weekly basis (think short-term here, remember?) to place yourself on the success side of the razor’s slight edge. If you’re having trouble thinking of three action steps, look back over your goals and specific PLANS and see how to break them up into actions.

Jan

Overcome Obstacles – Ten Habits Day 12

By AngEngland | Ten Habits

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Many writers will use a marathon analogy here. I hate running. I am humbled by many of you of who hit the pavement and run the track or whatever the proper lingo is for running. I choose to think of overcoming obstacles with a FOOTBALL analogy! Because that’s just how I roll.

There Are Always Obstacles to Overcome - Are you Willing? Photo by Gary Scott

For those of you who don’t know – the wide receiver is the guy who usually catches the football. His goal is a touch down. He has to cross a certain line, before getting tackled to the ground, in order to score a touchdown. He knows what he wants to reach but he doesn’t give up the first time it gets tough. After all – there are a lot of people out there who’s sole purpose seems to be preventing him from reaching his goal.

Does he just lay down with the ball and wait for the end? Give up and go quietly into the night? No!

He does whatever it takes to reach this certain destination -

Juke – You’d probably recognize this move if you saw it, whether you recognize the term or not. It’s a quick side-step around an opponent. You continue along the same path, towards the same ultimate destination, but just do a little jig to the left or to the right to move around what would have otherwise been a problem area.
Spin Move - A quick change of direction to break free from another’s grasp and move the receiver to an open lane. This happened to me last year. Suddenly I found myself pro-blogging big time, just as I let go of another very time-consuming obligation! A spin move? Well, my head was spinning. How did I end up here? But there was the open path right in there, it only made sense to occupy what was open and go full-force!
Speed/Running – Outrunning those trying to hold him down. Or just plain continuing on! Sometimes pure and simple grit is what it takes. If you’ve hit a plateu sometimes you just keep plugging along. When the world catches up to your efforts, you’ll be far ahead. Growth is so rarely linear – it tends to show itself in spits and spurts. The efforts during the lulls are just as important as efforts during the peak times. Maybe more so.
Continued Effort – Not as fancy as the other moves, sometimes the answer is to just. keep. going. You’ve seen those kick-off returns where the guy is running 80 or 90 yards? When he gets about halfway he’s wide open – nothing in his way except the distance that he must travel. Are you willing to endure and go the distance?
Digging it out – Stretching out for the last ground to get the score. You’ve all seen this – the player being tackled who has the presence of mind to stretch out and make that game-winning score. Have you ever felt like you’re going down or falling behind? What can you do to stretch your efforts to the maximum?

So I’m sure you can see how these moves apply themselves to blogging, writing, business and life in general. And hopefully you can see how the work we’ve done previously with inspired goals, specific plans, etc are so important. When you know your ultimate goal, and you have a plan to get there, obstacles are less important because you know where you are heading.

Food For Thought – What is a recent obstacle that has presented itself to you? How can you overcome (or bypass or move-around or spin away from) that obstacle?

Read Ten Habits Day 13 to learn how tiny steps toward success add up quickly!

Jan

7 Day Focus To More PR For Your Business – Ten Habits Day 11

By AngEngland | Making Money, Ten Habits

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Angela’s Note - John Sternal (@SternalPR) is a veteran PR practitioner who’s helped many small businesses obtain media exposure on a national level. He’s the co-founder of UnderstandingMarketing.com, the #smbiz Twitter chat for small business, and has authored The PR Toolkit for small business. This is a blog post to print out and tack on your memo board for future reference!

John Sternal Shares Public Relations Wisdom

When I travel to speak with small businesses and entrepreneurs to learn about their companies there are two things I constantly hear. They want to learn to use PR to build more awareness of their business. And although they want to save on costs by doing it themselves they just don’t know where they’d find the time to become their own PR person.

Here I’ve put together an action plan that can help entrepreneurs and small business owners easily grasp the fundamentals of PR along with steps they can do each day to minimize their investment of time. It’s very true that in PR the more you put into it the more you’ll get out of it. But let’s be realistic for a second and remember what a day is like for a typical small business owner that has his/her hand in virtually every aspect of the operation. Time is of the essence.

Here’s my 7-Day Plan to help you get more PR for your small business (each step should take only 30 minutes):

Day 1 Brainstorming Ideas: the first thing you have to do is come up with a story. For many this is the most difficult part because it often involves a lot of creativity. So let me try to make this as easy as possible. If you think all you have to do is think about something cool about your company, load that into a press release and send it to a reporter, you couldn’t be farther from the truth. Reporters will tell you your story is “too narrow.” So how do you broaden a story to make it appealing? Here’s an example:

One of my small business clients is in car leasing. A narrow story would be to approach an editor and pitch an angle on how the company was helping small businesses get rid of unused car leases to save money. Many of you may actually think this is a timely story given the current economic climate. Doesn’t matter what you think; it matters what the reporter thinks. So instead we found other similar trends, i.e. getting rid of unused IT equipment, office furniture and even real estate, packaged it all up into one “larger” story and sent it to The Wall Street Journal to see if they’d be interested. Read the story here.

Everyone Has a Story to Share - Are you Sharing Yours? photo by typofi

Day 2 Write Your Story:

Again, stop thinking of how great your company is and start thinking of writing for the reporter. This means writing pitch letters that capture their attention. If you’re in a technical industry you better find a way to dumb-down the pitch so that it doesn’t include industry jargon and buzzwords, unless you’re actually pitching an industry trade journal. Offer up lots of interesting anecdotes, customer stories and perspective. “PetPain Tablets Now Available In Minnesota” is a headline that won’t capture much attention, but “Older Dogs Now Learn New Tricks In Minnesota” will capture the attention of a company that offers arthritis supplements for pets.

Day 3 Research The Media: One of the most important steps in the entire process, you must know who you’re pitching. Read your local newspapers to see who’s writing stories of similar topics. Watch the local television news. If it’s in a different market, log on to the Internet to research reporters at a different newspaper or media outlet. As an added tip, start emailing them every now and then to comment on their stories. Don’t pitch your story just yet, but do let them know what you liked or disliked about a story they did. Make it so that they know who you are as this will pay off later. There also are resources to help you find what reporters are looking for when writing their stories.

Day 4 Ask Customers For Help: Customer stories can often seal the deal for a story since it adds the perspective many readers are interested in and it takes away from your story being too promotional. Talk to your customers and find out why they buy your product. What’s their situation? How do you help them? Use this information in your writing and pitch letters to again capture the reporter’s attention. And ask the customers if it’s ok for a reporter to contact them. This always gets a reporter’s attention. If you’ve done a good job developing quality products with a good reputation then this should be an easy step. If not, then you’ve got other things to worry about first before going after PR.

Day 5 Email Reporters: Today it’s time to send your pitch to the reporter you have targeted. If you don’t have their email address, simply call the paper or television station and ask for it. It’s easier than you think to get their email address. Write a few paragraphs of why your story is interesting to their readers and click send. Don’t worry about being too formal; they’re people too and can have normal conversations.

Have You Been Putting Off a Necessary Phone Call? photo by kgreggain

Day 6 Phone Calls:

First, take a deep breath. You can do this. A lot of reporters will list their email and phone number at the end of their stories. Use this checklist to double-check the strength of your story, call up the reporter and ask them if it’s a good time to grab a minute to tell them about a story idea you have. But do this AFTER you’ve already sent them an email so they may already be familiar with the story. Oh by the way, it won’t be such a cold call if you’ve already established a little relationship from commenting on other stories. They’ll remember you. And they won’t bite. The worst that can happen is they say no, which means you either move on to the next reporter or you go back to step one and develop a different story. But don’t be afraid of getting no for an answer. Babe Ruth once was the home run king of baseball but he also struck out a lot, too.

Day 7 Follow News Patterns: If a reporter says they’ll keep your story on file, you now are tasked with reading the news each day. Reporters like to do stories on items already in the news so monitor what’s being reported on because you never know when something breaks and your story is relevant. For example, a company that makes portable radios may have a hard time getting a story in the news – until a hurricane hits a certain area.

Following these daily action items won’t turn you into the next PR powerhouse, but it will give you an honest chance of getting your story in the news.

Angela’s Follow Up – Think you don’t have a story? Think again! Most of us have definite news-worthy things happening in our lives – whether it’s connections we’re making, businesses we’re starting, books we’re releasing, campaigns we’re working on with our blogs….whatever. Think about one newsworthy story in your life and see what happens if apply this seven day challenge to that story!

Jan

Focus Your Efforts – Ten Habits Day 10

By AngEngland | Ten Habits

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Angela’s Note – Laurie Pawlik-Kienlin (@QuipsandTips) is a prolific writer having published many articles with me at Suite101.com, in addition to print articles for Reader’s Digest, Woman’s Day and more. She is also a very successful blogger and the Quips and Tips for Writers is well worth subscribing to – I enjoy getting the emails in my inbox.

Grow Your Blog Like a Tree - Plant it Today! Photo by Bert Hennes

Whether you have one baby blog or multiple blogging projects on the go, to succeed you need to focus your efforts – and stay focused. I’ve a full-time writer and blogger, and I’ve learned several things over the years about focus, drive, and determination. And, I’d love to share what I know with you!
To get and stay focused as a blogger, you must…

Start today.

One of my favorite quips is, “The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The second best time is right now.” It’s an ancient Chinese saying (I think) and it applies to everything from deciding on a blogging schedule to searching for better-paying advertisements for your blog. Don’t postpone what you need to do, my friends; if you let things slide, you start the habit of procrastination and avoidance. It doesn’t matter how far you get today – or what you need to do – as long as you start. Remember: taking action builds confidence.

Develop habits that keep you focused on your goals or intentions.

Everything you do every day will take you one step closer to your goals, or one step further away. Take a good hard look at your daily habits, for they form the routine that will help you build a sucessful blog (or hold you back!). Your habits help you stay disciplined to stick to your goals – and good habits will save you from regret in five or 10 years. But go easy on yourself, because learning to break your bad writing habits takes time and effort.

Set – and stick to – a blogging schedule.

I created and maintain five blogs; without my schedule I’d be wrestling with frustration and paralysis! Here’s what works for me: on Mondays and Fridays, I write for Quips and Tips for Achieving Your Goals. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I work on Quips and Tips for Successful Writers. Tuesdays and Thursdays is also scheduled for Quips and Tips for Couples Coping With Infertility. On Wednesdays, I write for Quips and Tips for Spiritual Seekers. Mondays and Fridays is See Jane Soar. I stick to this schedule like white on rice, and it makes it easy for me to stay focused.

Remember that success is a process that you can enjoy.

Think of published authors you love to read, or the successful bloggers you’d love to emulate. As you admire them, let their characteristics of perseverance, faith, discipline, and constant effort motivate you to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Since achieving goals rarely happens overnight, you need to get comfortable with the fact that it will take time to get where you want to be

Fellow scribes, remember that building a successful blog isn’t a destination. It’s a journey. (Is that hokey? It just felt right!)

To get started on “getting and staying focused” right now:

Figure out what top two or three things you need to do to improve your blog (eg, set a blogging schedule? plan a series of articles instead of one post at a time? increase your readership? find guest authors?); and
Break down those general goals (eg, set a blogging schedule) into specific action steps (eg, figure out what days work best for you, for blogging; put it into your daytimer so you actually stick to your schedule; ask a fellow blogger to be your “accountability buddy”).

I welcome your feedback – what do you do to stay focused on your blog?

See more tips for focusing your blog efforts, and then click over to Ten Habits, Day 11 to learn how to market yourself. Or learn more about how I manage writing for multiple blogs and websites.

Jan

Focus by Elimination and Smart Work – Ten Habits Day 9

By AngEngland | Ten Habits

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Sometimes writers have to STOP one thing, in order to take on another. Photo by Emil Bacik

I’ve been asked many times, especially in the last year or so, “How do you do so much?” I get a lot done because I am highly motivated, work smarter (not harder!), and because I have learned to focus by eliminating those things which either do not provide income or passion. In fact, last year was not only a time of great increase for me in my writing career, but also a time of pruning.

How do you know what to eliminate?

Here’s what I did. First I decided what to keep. After that it was easy to let things go – even things I really enjoyed.

I made two columns on a sheet of notebook paper. They were uneven, about 2/3 and 1/3.
On one side I listed all the writing “jobs” or projects I had. On the other side of the paper I listed the revenue income amount or projected return. (For example, an ebook I was working on was full of quality evergreen content and I estimated I would make a fair amount in return for the effort.)
I went through the list and put a star next to anything that was something I felt passionate about. For example, at that time my plan for Untrained Housewife was taking an enormous amount of investment and energy, with ZERO income. But I felt passionate about the site and wasn’t willing to let it go. Some things you do because they feed you emotionally and spiritually, not because they feed you physically.
Next I put a star beside anything that was paying a bill. You can’t exactly argue with a steady income, right?
I had, at the time, about a half dozen things left on the list. Only one of them is something I’m still currently involved with – the rest I let go. Simple as that. Emailed the appropriate people, thanked them for the experience and wished them well on their future endeavors.

How do you write at so many different places?

I either have total opposite topics on different sites, or I have the same exact topics on those various sites. For example, I use all of my alternative medicine knowledge and interests to write for Examiner‘s Alternative Medicine topic. I use all of my gardening stuff as a Plants and Bulbs Feature Writer at Suite101. But for what I’m doing at Blissfully Domestic Blogging Column, I use the same topics as what I’m writing about here. So when I did the post about increasing traffic to your blog, I used the same theme to post an entry on Blissfully Domestic from the reverse view – how to kill your blog. Same idea, just written from the opposite side of the coin. Which means I did zero research or even heavy thinking about my blissdom entry.

Doubling up your research, whenever possible is a huge way to help you focus. The other way to help you focus as a writer is to write in narrow article series. Instead of trying to do one huge post about Yellow Flowers, you can turn that yellow flower garden idea into several smaller posts about yellow perennials, yellow annuals and yellow flowering bulbs. Same amount of research – but two months worth of articles instead of one, single article.

Exercise for the Day:

Work Smarter - Think about topics that are currently popular on your blog. How can you continue to expand on that information? Can you use old research to create new posts, instead of having to do completely new research for every single post?

Work Where you NEED to be – Do you need to eliminate? Is there something that is neither feeding you emotionally nor feeding you monetarily? Why are you still doing it? Is it possibly something that should be eliminated, delegated or left alone for awhile?

Read the Ten Habits Day 10 to learn more about how to focus your writing efforts.

Jan

True to You – Ten Habits Day 8

By AngEngland | Ten Habits

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Angela’s Note – We are fortunate to have @JessicaKnows share with us. Jessica Smith is a Vice President in the Digital Practice at Fleishman-Hillard. She also blogs on her personal blog at JessicaKnows.com. She is also one of the first people I ever followed on Twitter and I’ve based this #10habits series on a similar project she did on her blog called #15days of marketing. Check it out for a “Step Two” after these Ten Habits finish up!

Yesterday Angela talked about being true with regard to the acronym TRUST and John Maxwell. Today, I want to talk about a different angle. I am still going to ask you to be true, but rather than putting it in the context of being true to your audience or clients…I want you to look within. Don’t get me wrong, your audience and your clients are uber important. However, if you do not remain true to yourself then you are doing everyone including you, a disservice.

Sometimes it’s easy to look at another blogger’s or competitor’s success and say to ourselves, “Maybe if I wrote more about XYZ…” or “Perhaps if we offered capability ABC…” then surely our traffic, our accolades, our awards, or our revenue would increase.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

When I first started blogging I enjoyed reading mom blogs because I was a relatively new mom and I aspired to be the domestic goddess, the super mom, the crafty queen, and the baking master I read about in so many of the blogs I was reading. The mom blogging community was one that while sometimes drama-laden, was warm and welcoming and I felt surrounded by those who inspired me to be more like them.

So naturally, I thought, when creating blog content of my own, I should write about my experiences with mommyhood, reaching my domesticated zen.

But there was a slight problem.

While I consider myself a really good mom, I’m an utter failure when it comes to being a domestic goddess. No. Really. I. Am.

What I do know a lot about though is marketing, branding, building alliances with people, threading people and experiences together to create a rich fabric of ideas, and learning from others and communicating those lessons.

So, I found with every blog post I wrote, the more I’d try to write it from solely a mom’s voice, the less connected I was with my readers. Here’s one stab I took at a parenting post when I talked about how much TV is too much for a preschooler. Not one of my more passionate posts. Now here’s one where I talk about whether or not bloggers should have a separate review blog. In most parenting circles the former topic would be considered more controversial and prone to debate than the latter. However, there was more conversation and controversy around the separate review blog post. Why? Because I had more to say on the subject and my readers were used to me offering commentary on blogger relations, marketing, advertising, and social media on my blog.

Staying true to one’s self has a lot to do with bring our past experiences, our education, and our expertise to the surface so that we might share it with others so that others might benefit. Sometimes that means we also share our learning processes as well. Bottom line: we’re all wired differently. I’ve been entrepreneurial since I was about five years old, selling watercolor paintings to my grandparents’ neighbors. I majored in communications and took part in leadership programs in college. My career started over 10 years ago with a role a large consulting firm that almost immediately put me outside of my comfort zone and taught me more about business in my first six months in the position than my entire time at college. I’ve found myself in the right place at the right time career-wise (like starting my career in the internet bubble 1999) but then had to transfer skills and reinvent myself for a new role just as many times (and when that same bubble burst 2001). I remain true to myself by sharing what I’ve learned from these experiences with my readers. And more often than not, I learn new lessons through the act of sharing those.

Do yourself a favor. Don’t compare yourself to anyone when it comes to blogging or your professional career. No one’s story is the same and your story is yours to tell. If something doesn’t feel right, listen to your gut. A colleague of mine said to me recently that as we get older we not only understand who we are, but more importantly…who we are not. To me, that sums it up nicely.

So here’s your exercises for today’s habit:

Do an inventory of your life’s lessons learned, your education, your professional expertise, and your talents. Then think of ways to weave those into your blog posts. If you are not a blogger, think about how these lessons learned can be incorporated into your next proposal or the next brainstorm you partake in.
Think of your life experiences as storytelling. Your summer renting beach chairs on the shore or that winter break you volunteered to distribute blankets to the homeless are relevant to the content you provide your audience and the experience your provide for your clients.
Keep the story alive by continuing to learn. When was the last time you went out of your comfort zone? Is there an opportunity that you can identify in the next month that will enrich your life? Take it!
Need help learning about what motivates you and allows you to stay true to yourself more often? Read Drive by Daniel Pink. This book really helped me to put things in perspective and I highly recommend it to anyone who is inspired to learn more about being true.

Visit the next Ten Habits post to learn about Focusing and When to Let Go.

Jan

Trust. Do You Have It? – Ten Habits Day 7

By AngEngland | Ten Habits

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The fourth habit in my original list of Ten Habits was to “Be True!” In John Maxwell’s book, 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, he says that “Trust is the foundation of leadership.” This is actually an important thing for bloggers to be aware of even if you are not “a leader” per se – the truth is as writers we are all thought leaders, as @typeamom likes to describe us. Or, we could be.

So here is the acronym that John Maxwell uses and unlike my previous acronyms is not one that I made up on my own. But it’s well worth sharing! It’s based on the letters for TRUST.

T – Tested

“We are what we repeatedly do” ~Aristotle

In other words, someone is considered “kind” because their actions have proven them kind in the past. Someone is considered a writer, because they write. And so on. What are calling yourself? Does that align with what you are doing? Can your readers trust that because your past actions have tested that out?

R – Reliability

Erratic behaviour breaks down trust….in web-based age change is rapid, YOU must be constant. For example, if I started this Ten Habits series but only discussed eight of the ten habits, that would erode the foundation of trust you, my readers, have placed in me. Everyone understands that life happens sometimes, but if you set out to do a certain thing at a certain time, you’d have built the expectation for that to take place.

U – Understanding

Show that you care. Show that you know your audience. Listen when they ask for more information or have questions. In a lot of ways that can even help guide content production. This series is an example of me responding to readers emailed questions. When one of my readers said they loved the ten habits but wanted more information about what each LOOKED like – how to APPLY them in real life ways, I listened.

S – Servanthood

An honest and sincere intent to set your heart on the good of people around you. That doesn’t mean door mat. Slave. It just means that you genuinely intend to help others. There are a lot of ways to do this and it can look completely different depending on your situation, but the intent for good should be there.

T – Time

Not in a day, but through daily investment. Trust doesn’t develop with a single post, a single discussion or a one-time meeting. It usually comes through multiple interactions. So in that regard it really ties in to being consistent and true to what you say you will do.

Food for thought –

Are you committed to never breaking a promise with anyone?

What are you intentionally doing to cultivate trust?