Here’s the Biggest Blunder for Bloggers..
Why 9 Out Of 10
Bloggers Fail Miserably…
As a decent human being…
You probably trim your hair more than once a year. You probably bath more than once a month. And…
You probably change your underwear more than once a week.
Sure hope you do!
A typical person will only pick up their phone to call a prospect once. They will only run one advertisement in the local newspaper. And…
They will only ever start one business before calling it quits.
Unfortunately, the only real difference between “overnight success” and miserable failure is how many times you’re willing to pick yourself up off the ground.
How many days you’re willing to sacrifice to win that one time. Or how many days of so-called “failure” you’re willing to put up with.
Trust me when I tell you that you won’t get anywhere if you only try it once and then call it quits.
That includes blogging or writing.
Blogging is the Ultimate game of consistency.
Short term writers are prevalent.
Writing Once, twice or thrice before giving up.
The long term writer will be king.
Win the decade, not the day.
Just look for long term impact over short term impact.
Blogging relies on how many times you rehearse over time spent writing one particular masterpiece.
Craft a thousand tweets before ten blog posts before one book.
Skim a dozen blog-posts before writing one.
Because the bottom-line is:
You WON’T get anywhere if you do anything thing once and call it quits!
Then you might want to re-read this article more than once…
You don’t develop good writing habits by perfecting a single masterpiece.
You develop it by writing daily throughout the years and challenging that single moment your mind procrastinates.
The Most Essential Reasons You’re Wasting Your Life Blogging?
Writing is a way for human beings to preserve their thoughts.
The ancient Greeks saw writing very differently.
Socrates for example was against the notion of writing.
He said; “To the reader, an author’s writing only sheds a partial truth and it will create forgetfulness in the learners’ soul…”
What did he mean by that?
Well Socrates never seemed to write anything down.
Most of his ideas on philosophy came from Plato’s writing.
Plato was Socrates’ student. It is through Plato’s writing that we now know Socrates made the case against writing. He said that words themselves doesn’t paint the complete picture.
But it had never really occurred to me that writing actually forces us not to use our memories.
He’s right to the common man who cannot think on his feet.
People will tend to trust an externally written word and not fully question the thoughts of the writer.
And it was an “AhHa!” for me because real knowledge can only be gathered through dialog.
Asking questions is your pickaxe for getting answers from the author.
Interrogate until the full extend of the knowledge is unearthed.
What’s interesting is that for most of early homo sapiens, basic instincts and knowledge is passed down via dialogs’ and not via the written word.
What was really telling, was this. We only created writing back in 3200 BC so we had about 500o years to evolve through writing.
Writing was one of mankind earliest invention.
It is technology.
An extension of our minds.
And technology can be a double edge sword. It makes people dumber because we don’t have to always think for ourselves.
Just look at how we’re all outsourcing our brains to the cloud. We take the tweets and the words from centralized mass media as the trusted written word.
At the end, it depends a lot on how we use the technology.
Writing should be an aid for your own personal wisdom, not as an absolute source of information.
More than half of a billion people today rely on Google to create a dialog with others.
Would Socrates be a writer if he lived in the age of blogging, twitter or Facebook?
What do you think?
Why I write…
FOR ATTENTION
I don’t want to talk.
Meaningless conversations with the common man.
Weak minds tend to talk about people.
Writing was my first outlet.
A way to attract great minds who discuss ideas.
I started writing on the internet because there’s nowhere else to easily access over a billion people.
And that is the very first time I wrote for a public audience.
The last time that happened is now.
I write for attention because I fear I don’t have the confidence to talk to someone smarter than me in the future.
At least I have a place to gather my words before I am lost for words in front of them.
TO SEEM SMART
The first time I published a book was 8 years ago.
I started writing because I needed a way to market myself.
I told everyone I was starting a publishing business.
People laughed. They asked, “Why Publishing? Don’t you have other better things to do?”
As a published author, people would have a deeper understanding of my internal workings’ of the mind.
I wanted people to think I was smart enough to publish a book.
TIP: Don’t just write to look smart.
Tell your own embarrassing story and weave in the lesson you learnt.
Write for yourself, not for people.
Add “Triggers” To Your Writing
Start with reciprocity.
Try to get people to question your ideas because reciprocity is the Yang to your Yin.
It creates balance to your soul.
It reflects in your writing.
I call it “Writers’ Contrast.”
If you’re an honest and sincere writer, people will not only just praise you, often times they will call you stupid.
And that is an indication that you’re making a stand on your ideas, not just caving in by agreeing to the masses.
I think the biggest writing mistake people make is they’re afraid to look dumb, so they follow safe paths that cap their stupidity, not realizing that they also cap their potential to connect with their readers.
If you’re not afraid to look dumb in your writing, you’ll take high upside bets that other writers won’t take.
To the extent that one wants to be seen as “smart”, the goal is not to look “smart” at every step of the way – it’s to look “smart at the very *end*
Often times you have to look dumb for a certain period of time to get there.
This is where the stay foolish part comes from in Steve Job’s speech.
Sometimes, however, you may look dumb forever. Even if it bombs, the pursuit of assembling meaningless words into something sensible is in it, its own reward.
So i can live through the words. Eternally.
More importantly, being a person just like them, but at the same time dedicated to making their lives better.
This is the principle of “association.”
Commitment and consistency to writing is still key. And Expectancy is another trigger to give your readers something more to expect if you promised something the reader would get at the end of the article.
You Don’t Need Them All…
Now, Ryan Holiday, the author of “The Obstacle is the Way” told people. ‘Please, stop writing as your business card.’
All the lame business self-help blogs & books that talk about endless positivity and flawless business executions adds no new knowledge to the world.
It’s full of fluff.
No other unique insight, just like every other opinion in the world.
Don’t just write to get more customers or sales. Do an experiment. Share that outcome with the world.
First be clear about the outcome. What do you want people to learn? What do you want people to think? What do you want them to feel?
Then, once you’re clear about that, you ask yourself how can I create an element of reciprocity to accomplish that outcome?
How can I influence what they’re going to do… what they’re going to think… and what they’re going to feel?
Then ask, how can I use elements of contrast to do that?
How can I use association to do that? How can I use expectancy to do that? How can I use consistency to do that?
How can I use conformity or going with the crowd to do that? And how can I get them more engaged in the message?
The more of those triggers you can leverage, better-performing article you’re going to have.
I would strongly recommend that you take that information I just gave you and create a template for yourself to analyze your message before you put it out into the world and see how many of those you’re leveraging.
I assure you that if you do that and you make an effort, everything that you put out there will get better and better results for your business and help you grow faster and be more profitable.
Questions or Comments on this article?
type in a comment below…
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