photo credit: HPUPhotogStudent

The motivation does matter. If you’re thinking a blog will save your dying small business, replace a marketing strategy, or provide personal fulfillment, maybe get some therapy instead.

You should NOT blog as a (sole) means of advertising and marketing.

A blog can be part of your overall marketing scheme, but a blog itself is not an advertisement. Let’s look at what advertising is.

“The true secret of advertising success is to say the right thing to as many people as you can afford to reach over and over again. Word-of-mouth advertising is the result of having impressed someone, anyone, deeply.” -Roy H. Williams

The problem with using a blog to advertise is this: a blog needs to provide valuable content which gives your readers new information over time, not the same sales message repeated ad infinitum.

You can use your blog as a piece of your marketing strategy. It’s a tool. It helps you establish credibility. It helps you connect with your customers. It can contain advertisements. You can lead people to it by means of your other advertisements. But it is not, itself, an advertisement.

You should NOT blog because you “need an online presence.”

If you need an online presence, you’d first better stop and figure out why.
Do you need a storefront?
A place for your customers to hang out and swap war stories?
A place to build community based around a common interest?
An informational website where people can find out more about you?

There are different ways to have a “presence” online. A blog is only one of them, and not necessarily the right one. If you have a genuine reason to produce valuable content on a regular basis, then a blog is a good idea. Otherwise, no.

You should NOT blog because Facebook isn’t working.

First, you should figure out why Facebook isn’t working. Once you do that, you’ll know if you need a blog or not.

You should NOT blog because your competitor has a blog.

Unless you can and will do it better.

You should NOT blog because you have no marketing money and so this will have to do.

See blogging as related to advertising and marketing, above.

You should NOT blog because “blogging is social networking,” because it isn’t.

Blogging is producing valuable content on a regular basis. Social networking is establishing connections with people via the myriad of social media and networking tools on the Internet.
You might network and get a chance to promote your blog in that social networking. And when you combine blogging with social networking, you can get something very good indeed.
But alone, no. Not the same.

You should NOT blog because YouTube scares you.

If you’re thinking about blogging because some other method of reaching your audience, such as YouTube, has been suggested to you and you just want to avoid it… because it scares you…
You might as well bite the bullet and do the thing that scares you first.
Fear is usually a sign of Resistance; your brain is telling you this is way over your head, but your gut is telling you this is what will work. So your self-defense mechanism kicks in, and scrambles for something that will make everybody happy. A compromise.

Don’t blog to avoid some other means of communication that will actually work better for you.

You should NOT blog because you need a way to express yourself.

No. No, you should definitely paint instead. Or write poems (but don’t blog them. Please). Or perhaps dance. Or, if you must, go ahead and blog to express yourself, but don’t call it a business blog.

photo credit: Incase.

Quit sitting on the fence, pardner. It’s time to make hay while the sun shines, or, um, build blogs while the Internet hums.

You should blog to establish authority.

Authority, or expertise, can set your business apart in a competitive field as the top-tier business, the one that really knows its stuff, the one that is best in all areas of the business.
Blogging can help you establish that expertise. It provides a way for you to regularly share valuable information, insider tips, insight, knowledge of your area of business.
It isn’t an overnight process, however. You’ll need to blog regularly and make sure your content is valuable to your readers. That means no fluff pieces, no personal rants, just informative, valuable content produced on a continual basis.

You should blog to reach more customers.

Blogs give you a voice, and that voice can say things that your customers, locally or globally, want to hear. You can broadcast your new product, your online service, your informational products, your designs, your small business in any form.
Blogs allow you to reach into spaces that you can’t physically access.
However, just blogging won’t do the job. You have to combine blogging with marketing to get your voice heard. If you can do both, you’ve got a powerful tool on your hands.

You should blog to increase customer loyalty.

Are your customers aching to know more about your product or service? Are you leading a tribe or forming a community? Then you can use your blog to provide the information your customers want, to interact, to allow them to give you feedback on how your business is doing.
A blog can be a simple and powerful way of increasing customer loyalty. You can provide answers and solutions that your customers need, can take their questions and comments, and can establish credibility and strengthen your relationship with your customers.

You should blog to increase sales.

If you blog to establish authority, reach more customers, and/or increase customer loyalty, then you’ll almost automatically be increasing your sales. Almost.
Your blog can easily point your customers to where and how to buy. You have to strike a balance, though. If all you ever post to your blog are sales pitches, you’ll lose your audience. People get sold to enough; they aren’t looking for more of that when they read blogs.

If, however, you are providing information that your customers want, and doing so in a courteous and continual way, they’ll accept non-spammy, well-timed promotions: perhaps an ad at the bottom of each post, or a weekly product highlight post, or graphics in the sidebar. How you promote sales in your blog is a matter of style and preference. You should definitely aim to increase sales with your blog, but you should aim to do so by making the blog content itself a free and valuable resource first.

photo credit: chedder

In proportion as you increase the value you give for a dollar, just so you will find it easier to get the dollar. – William Crosbie Hunter

There are, potentially, lots of ways to make a dollar.
Lemonade stand, best-selling book, gourmet cookies, high-tech innovations, gutter cleaning services. You can get a job and make money. You can start a business and lose OR make money.
You’re not quite sure which it’s going to be until you try.

There are also lots of ways to get a business making more money.

What’s the first thing people look at it? Cut costs! Spend less! Reduce expenses!

And one of the easiest ways to do that is to give less for what you charge. Shave a little off here and there. That’s how places get to offering “beef” that is 88% beef and 12% something else…

It is against the nature of the productive person to focus on cutting costs, because cutting costs is about reducing production.

Production is expensive.
Production requires energy and resources.

But production is where you make the money.

The person who would be freakishly productive needs to quit focusing on the cut-the-costs-to-save-a-buck mentality of doing business, and embrace the one that increases production which increases value which increases sales which increases profits.

That’s a lasting model, a sustainable one. It’s a good way to live and a good way to build a business.

Cutting cost methods that require you to reduce production and/or reduce value to your customers is a short-term fix. It is like shooting the ox to save money on grain during the winter. That’s great for winter, but how are you going to pull that plow in springtime?

• A great piece from Laura Vanderkam (one of my favorite writers) about this point: Beyond frugality: making more money.

photo credit: maureen lunn

Content is great until you’re stuck coming up with fresh, relevant, helpful, valuable blog posts, day after day after day after day.
What you have to do is capture the ideas before you need them (have you ever noticed how ideas leave as soon as it’s time to brain storm?).

Here are potential idea sources:

• Write down all the brilliant book ideas you have that “somebody should write someday.”
• Set up a Google Alert for your target keywords and check it regularly.
• Keep an RSS Reader set up for relevant blogs in your industry, from your peers and/or competitors, and those maintained by great customers, hobbyists, specialists.
• Read books. Books that are relevant to your topic are full of post ideas. It’s just about breaking that information down into post-sized pieces, putting your thoughts with what you’ve read, and sharing it.
• Read magazines.
• Read trade journals.
• Read the local publications (newspapers, news magazines, etc.)
• Listen to talk radio.
• Ask people what they want to know about your business/industry.
• Have a comment box or other feedback form? Every comment you’ve ever gotten is a potential blog post.
• Do a Google search on your most popular product or service, and see what comes up in the search results. What are other people blogging about that’s relevant to your products/services?
• What are the FAQs of your business? Each is a potential post.
• Check your employee training materials. Many of the step-by-step processes can be spun into a piece that’s interesting to customers, who crave insider knowledge.
• Keyword searches on Twitter can turn up a whole host of mentions and links.

Here are some ways to capture those ideas:

• Nothing wrong with good ole pen and paper. Take notes as you’re reading, copy down quotations and passages, or just jot down title ideas inspired by the material at hand.
• You can do the computer version of the above simply by having a dedicated word document.
• Evernote. It’s a blogger’s best friend.
• Google Docs.
• Use your reader and star the posts you want to come back to later.
• Highlight and/or annotate your books and keep the stack close by your computer. Bad idea, though, if you’re taking advantage of your library’s books.
• Use your Kindle’s (or other e-reader’s or tablet’s) highlighting/annotating features, and share it to yourself.
• Use a voice recorder on your phone, tablet, or computer.

All quotes below from Small Business, BIG Vision by Adam and Matthew Toren. Read my review.

1. You need a vision, because otherwise you will burn out before you even get started.

2. Entrepreneurism isn’t for weenies.

“Turning your initial vision into a viable businss has everything to do with your level of passion and ability to keep moing forward, even in the face of challenges.”

3. Success has many different (wildly varying, personal) definitions, but almost all of them involve Freedom/Choice.

And the best/easiest/fastest way to get that freedom? Financial success, which allows you to have financial independence & stability, which allows you to live a life of freedom.

“Success means putting yourself in a position that allows you to monetize your passion. …True success comes when you wake up each day with the freedom and flexibility to do what you want, when you want, and how you want to do it. I feel like I’m in control of my own destiny, and that I positively change other people’s lives as well.” -Dan Schawbel of Millennial Branding, LLC, in the book.

4. Giving up half-way through = FAIL. Hang in there.

“The many successful entrepreneurs we’ve interviewed from a variety of industry sectors, backgrounds, and areas of the world have almost all credited their PERSEVERANCE as the most significant element of their success. They claim that their ability to maintain their vision and a positive mind-set in the face of adversity has been the X factor that has made all the difference in their eventual achievement or failure.”

5. Planning is important, but not in the way you might think. A full-blown business plan won’t help you as much (at all?) as an action-oriented goal-oriented plan that will guide your daily action. (Action is the key word.)

“One way to avoid, or at least reduce, the pressures that can dampen your entrepreneurial spirit is to stick to a plan as closely as possible. This isn’t your business plan; rather, it’s about a daily action plan that keeps you focused–not only on the details of your day, but on the big picture as well. A great way to devise such a plan is to ask yourself what you HAVE to do daily to achieve your long-term objectives. Once you’ve answered that question, design your daily plan around those activities, and delegate or hire others to perform as many of the other tasks as possible. “

6. You’ve got to commit. You can’t succeed as a half-hearted entrepreneur.

“Be very aware that you are not capable of being ‘half pregnant’ when starting a business-meaning that you have to literally be ‘all in.’ Somebody else will be all in, and they will beat you. If you’re interested in work/life balance in the first 36 months of starting your own business, you will lose.” -Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV in the book.

7. You CAN take over the world… or at least part of it.

“It doesn’t matter what your area of expertise is–you can turn it into a revenue stream, and even an information empire, if you choose to take it there. Your reach is practically infinite if you use the Internet and rapidly mounting popularity of social media.”

8. Your knowledge is valuable.

“In short, I became a rapid content creator and educator. To stand out as an expert in any field, you must do two things: (1) create content that educates and entertains people, and, (2) always keep learning. To be a good teacher, you must first be an excellent student.” -Shama Hyder Kabani of the Marketing Zen Group in the book.

Disclosure: I frequently guest post for YoungEntrepreneur.com, founded by the Toren brothers.

So, another business book. Just what we need, right?

Except, here’s the thing:

When two guys who have been successfully starting, building, and selling companies since their teenage years decide to write a book about entrepreneurship, you can figure it might be worth a read.

And you would figure right.

Here’s what the Toren brothers do with this book:

• They take basic entrepreneurial concepts, provide an overview and some experiential insight, and then give you one or two profiles to see the points in action.

Those profiles are rich. You’re not just reading about business topics, or theoretical moves, or even a how-to guide for any business area. You’re reading real stories from real entrepreneurs who have succeeded.

The whole thing is tied together by this theme of BIG vision, which the Toren brothers purport is essential for entrepreneurial success. As they say in the introduction, “Each entrepreneur we profile will substantiate that his or her unwavering belief is the single factor that has made all the difference in their success.”

And a little later:
“Your vision is what solidifies your resolve when things get tough, and it’s what clarifies exactly why you want to be in business in the first place.”

With the theme of BIG vision, the interviews with varied and successful entrepreneurs, and their own real-life experience and insight into what makes success happen, the Torens have given us a business book worth reading.

To Sum Up

• Primarily written for new entrepreneurs, or those contemplating a move into the world of start-ups, business ownership, and all that fun stuff.
• 8 chapters, enjoyable reading. Each chapter covers a main topic, providing an overview, a related entrepreneurial profile or two, insight & tips, and often some step-by-step guidance on how to do what.
• Available in all sorts of digital formats as well as that old-fashioned print stuff.
• Nice list of resources at the back of the book.
• Long list of praises at the front of the book.
• Topics covered include getting investors vs. getting collaborators, do you really need a business plan?, employees, innovation, and more.
• Here’s the website.
• Here’s the blog.
• Here’s the book on Amazon.

photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar

And help you justify those excuses. And give you ideas for some more.

Everybody.

We don’t want to make people feel bad. Really.

And some of those excuses are legitimate, right? It’s much nicer to agree, and nod and smile, and give out pats on the back.
We want people to like us. So we don’t call each other out on our whiny, pathetic excuses, our invented reasons for not doing the things we should be doing.

Instead, we help each other take it easy, take a break. We give each other reasons to settle.

The leader, the achiever, is the one who will quit making excuses, quit accepting excuses, and quit letting other people validate his or her excuses.

The leader will say, Yes, we all have valid reasons for not doing the work, not putting in the time. We all have demands, situations. There is a crisis every moment. But those are just excuses.

The work remains. The art remains. The need remains. The dream remains. And our job is to get over the excuses and do the work anyway.

photo credit: Eustaquio Santimano

Peter Drucker named these “four entrepreneurial activities that run in parallel” as the conditions for survival.

He also called them Universal Entrepreneurial Disciplines but I think conditions for survival makes a catchier headline, don’t you?

• Condition 1: Organized abandonment “of products, services, processes, markets, distribution channels, and so on that are no longer an optimal allocation of resource.”
• Condition 2: Organization “for systematic, continuing improvement.”
• Condition 3: Organization “for systematic and continuous exploitation, especially of its successes.”
• Condition 4: Organization for “systematic innovation.”

Let’s break those out of biz-speak (oh, you business writers with your love of Latinate words).

Condition 1: Organize your business to regularly clean out what isn’t working.

I wrote a piece for OPEN Forum a while back that covered this: 5 Ways You Are Sabotaging Your Business. Check out Sabotage #3.

In short: what worked once isn’t going to keep working forever. What worked best isn’t going to hold its position. Markets change, people change, businesses change, products change.

You have to find a way to make regular checks on how well things are working and get rid of what isn’t valuable.

Condition 2: Organize your business to keep getting better.

You can’t rest on your laurels, people.

If you want to be a freakishly productive, successful small business owner, you have to keep moving forward. Keep getting better. Keep improving.

Condition 3: Organize your business to make the most of your successes.

When you get a celebrity mention or a dream client, how do you handle it? Do you accept the good things that come your way and then let them go on by, or do you work to make more of that good stuff happen?

Success breeds success, but not if you don’t get out there and encourage the, ehm, breeding. If you will.

Say you get that dream client: you land the gig, you do the work, you turn it in, everyone’s happy. Gig over. Now what?

At a minimum, you should:

• make sure you’re connected with dream client on every possible social front.
• use those bragging rights and put “did X gig for dream client” front and center on your CV, your portfolio, whatever.
• ask dream client for a recommendation.
• follow up with dream client to make sure everything is perfect (do that before you ask for the recommendation).
• AND: ask for more work.

Ask. Ask. Ask. Be proactive. No one is going to work for your dreams but you.

Condition 4: Organize your business to make creativity a normal part of operations.

Innovation is not an option.

If you’re a one-man show, figure out how to control your own inspiration and make sure those controls are in place. They should be routine.

Make time for creative thinking, doodling, fiddling around, reading, percolating, long walks, parties, great books, whatever gets your creative power buzzing.

(Don’t think this means you can write off party fare and art supplies as business expenses, however.)

photo credit: rick

Use features as benefits.

Basic Copywriting Formulas

Talk About Your Unique Selling Proposition

You might want to know this stuff. It’s important.

photo credit: matsuyuki

A study by Dr. Gail Matthews with the Dominican University of California finds “that people who wrote down their goals, shared this information with a friend, and sent weekly updates to that friend were on average 33% more successful in accomplishing their stated goals than those who merely formulated goals.”

Lemme run those by you again, in case you missed them:

1. Write down your goals.
2. Tell a friend about your goals.
3. Send weekly updates to your friend re: progress toward your goal.

Why do these steps work?

• By writing down goals, you help yourself to visualize them in a concrete way. This gives you a tangible, specific, trackable way to think about them.

Writing anything down helps you to remember it, and writing down a goal not only help you to remember it but to articulate it, since you have to actually choose the terms and numbers and parameters of the goal when you write it down, at least to some degree.

It is largely because we view the present in concrete terms and the future abstractly that we procrastinate. …Actions or goals framed in abstract terms… are less likely to be immediately pursued than goals framed in concrete terms. – Piers Steel

• When you share the information with a friend, you set up social pressure for yourself to perform and achieve the goal.

Nobody wants to be known as a failure. The moment you publicize your intention to achieve a goal, you set up a consequence (social embarrassment) if you fail to reach the goal.

• Sending weekly updates is a system of accountability.

Accountability is an important and very helpful factor in reaching goals, whether it’s meeting a friend at the gym five times a week or keeping track of your daily calorie intake and posting it in an online forum.

Even potentially anonymous systems of accountability (such as online websites and communities) can still be powerful enough to help you. Though your online identity may be disconnected from “your real life,” there’s still social pressure and accountability from your online friends, or even just from the public act of sharing information, that makes you want to do better so you can have a better reputation.

A few other thoughts on setting and reaching goals:

“People who credit their successes to personal capabilities and their failures to insufficient effort will undertake difficult tasks and persist in the face of failure. This is because they see their outcomes as influenceable by how much effort they expend. In contrast, those who ascribe their failures to deficiencies in ability and their successes to situational factors will display low achievement strivings and give up readily when they encounter obstacles.” (Source: Cognitive Perspectives on Emotion and Motivation)

• Think of success coming from personal capability.
• Think of failure coming from insufficient effort.
• Realize that you can increase your own capability.
• Realize that you can overcome situational factors.

“People also motivate themselves and guide their actions anticipatorily by the outcomes they expect to flow from given courses of behavior.” (Source: Cognitive Perspectives on Emotion and Motivation)

• Ask yourself what you truly expect to happen from a particular habit or behavior.
• “High expectancy forms the core of self-confidence and optimism: but if you start believing your goals aren’t achievable, you stop effectively pursuing them.” – Piers Steel