25.6.10 - How To Stop Procrastinating

This is a three-part feature written to cover different angles of Procrastination and how to stop / prevent it.

You’ll read about how forcing yourself is the wrong option when it comes to fighting procrastination and that you can go much further by being nice to yourself. You’ll also read about how expectations attached to tasks can make them impossibly difficult to complete and how to work around this. Finally, you’ll read more about short-term vs long-term rewards, and why, in cold hard numbers, procrastination is a bum deal for you.

This is based on my own experience in dealing with procrastination, insightful sessions with close friends on how to deal with unrealistic expectations and what I’ve learned from reading a diverse amount of helpful material on the topic, including Anthony Robbins, Michael Masteron, Robert Ringer, David Allen and many others. You’ve all been a great help in improving my life, thank you.

Stop Procrastinating By Being Nice To Yourself
Procrastination and Unrealistic Expectations
Procrastination and Short-Term v Long-Term Rewards

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24.6.10 - Risk-taking bloggers make more money

Yesterday I talked about competence and excellence – it’s a theme you’ll be hearing a lot in the next dozen or so articles from me. The basic idea is that “good enough” is never satisfactory – to be successful and to keep moving forward, you have to give it your best shot every single time.

Sometimes you might find it difficult to show up with your “A” game – however, if something is difficult it isn’t an excuse for not making it happen. If you find it difficult it just means that you either need to find a shortcut (work smarter) or dig deep and push through (work harder).

Today I want to talk about something related to competence – risk-taking.

Part of the philosophy of giving a project your 100% every day is that you are always pushing for improvements. At one time or the other, this push will require you to take risks, and it is at this point in time that you will feel the most resistance, when you will find it most difficult to ‘bring your A-game’ to the table.

Risk-taking is an integral fact of business and blogging. Every day we’re faced with choices that require us to leave the comfort of the familiar and venture into the unknown.

Should you hire a new writer? Is this new ad network worth your time? Will you take time out today to build links to your blog instead of writing your daily 5 articles? Is it a good idea to purchase advertising on that site or would it be smarter to keep the money and reinvest into a new design?

When faced with choices, our minds do something very interesting. You will intuitively know what the right decision is (as long as your priorities for your blog are straight), but whether you will be emotionally inclined towards it will depend on how ‘familiar’ it is. With choices that result in taking the unknown path (i.e. taking a risk), chances are that you will come up with rationalisations to avoid taking that step.

Real-world example – I have a friend who runs a very successful construction business. It takes him 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, plus another 6 hours on Sunday. That’s 78 hours per week of work, and this guy is running himself into the ground while building his business up. On one hand he’s happy with his success, but on the other hand it’s clear that he’d like to grow but cannot scale the business. Why Not? Because he hasn’t found a way to replicate himself.

This is a situation many bloggers are familiar with. After a certain point it becomes impossible for a blog to grow unless the owner leverages money for other peoples’ time instead of working on it 24 hours a day. Whether it is hiring a designer or a programmer or just to bring in new writers, it’s a risk the blogger has to take and as a result there’s a natural resistance to it.

This fear of the unknown (for that’s what it is – fear) limits you as a blogger. To paraphrase the Roman historian Tacitus (who was talking about leaders), the desire to play safe stands against every great blogger and blog. There will come a time when you will hit a plateau in your blog – and if you want to move past it, you will have to overcome your fear of the unknown, take risks and push forward to the next level.

Risk Taking 101

Some people look at guys like Tim Ferriss and Matt Furey and wonder how some people can accomplish so much in their lives – it seems inhuman until you realise that these people have an extraordinary willingness to take risks and explore the unknown. This drive doesn’t always pay off, but in most cases you end up being better off than before.

Today’s takeaway: Look at your blog and your blogging efforts and pinpoint the risks that you’ve been avoiding for the last few weeks or even months. Pick one of these risks, discuss the options with your friends and family (or people who know your business) and if it’s the right thing, do it.

And then repeat this once a day (or once a week if you’re doing ‘projects’) with your blog. You don’t have to turn into blind risk-taker, but by constantly pushing your limits and what you do with your blog you’ll not only grow your blog but you’ll also discover new opportunities in blogging and business that were never available to you before.

This article was originally written on 25 Sep 2007 for Performancing.com.

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24.6.10 - If you’re stuck for blogging ideas, write the (killer) headline first

When faced with blogger’s block, the only way to beat it is to buckle down, force yourself to write and push through the rough patches (actions produce motivation). However when you run out of ideas (or if your ideas aren’t clear enough), then here’s an effective technique to focus your mind and let your blog post write itself.

Simply put, craft your killer headline first. Simply writing any ordinary headline won’t cut it – you need to dig deep, hit the headline swipe files and spend time creating a gem of a headline.

How this helps bloggers:

Forces you to focus on the main idea behind your post, which in turn helps the internal monologue run clearer.
Guides you towards the type of post you can / should write. If the headline is designed to create a discussion, then you can write a conversational post. On the other hand, a list headline can help you focus on creating a list and perhaps fleshing it out to create cool linkbait.
Allows you to get off a good start – a great headline with an average article will do better than a great article with an average headline in terms of social media. You might think it’s unfair but that’s how our minds work especially in an attention-starved economy. The headline is king, and everything else leads from there.
If you find the basic idea not interesting enough, you’ll be able to stop there and not waste time writing a long post only to find out later that it doesn’t get a good response from readers.
You may end up with several headlines, leading to several concrete post ideas instead of a jumbled up bunch in your head.

The next time you’re stuck for ideas, try this approach – write the headline first, and shape the article accordingly. If it works for sales copywriting (where success is measured in hard numbers), it works for blogging as well.

Further reading:
101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle
Posting Tactics for a Well Rounded Blog
10 Killer Post Ideas

This article was originally written on 8 Sep 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - 21 ways to build a better blogger

When we talk about ‘creating’ better blogs, there’s an underlying assumption that it’s only the blog that needs improving.

The reality is, us bloggers could use a huge kick up the ass once in a while as well. We get sloppy, we sometimes let our standards slide and worst of all, when it comes to making improvements we look at external factors, not ourselves.

Last month I started compiling a list of ’strategies’ to improve my own blogging – I’m sharing that list here. We can’t become better bloggers overnight – it takes a lot of hard work, just like a blog – but like working on a blog, the best results are achieved when you stick to it and work at it for a long time.

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1.6.10 - How to make your boring website popular on Digg

As social media marketers, one of the most common questions we get about linkbaiting and social media promotion is this:

My niche is boring and / or non-technical – how do I turn it into something popular and linkable?

Last week I stumbled across a Wikipedia article that was, despite its dry (and boring) subject matter, doing quite well on Digg.

The article in question is this introductory piece on Montessori. You might want to take a few minutes to go through the article and figure out any angle that would make it interesting to the average Digg user. My best idea (and this was after reading the Digg link) was about how the Montessori system was a cover for brainwashing little children and sapping their creativity.

Paranoid delusions apart, I strongly doubt that my spin would have done better than this take:

Monetessori Method, the educational system of Google founders.

It is, for lack of a better term, f’n brilliant.

Instead of forcefully making a boring topic appear interesting, this digg user took something that would guarantee attention (Google founders) and related it to a quite uninteresting topic. The result is a Digg headline that probably got enough *blind diggs* to make it popular and it ended up getting 562 diggs (as of writing this article).

I have to admit, when I saw this headline I was in a hurry as well and gave a blind digg before I had time to read the page itself.

The only problem with this linkbait (although to be fair it was just a test) was that it could have been done much better (in terms of optimizing the landing page and in attracting links, if the digger had set up a page on their own site instead).

If you want to do some linkbaiting for your website but are having trouble making your content *interesting*, stop forcing the issue. Instead, follow this simple 3 step process:

1. Find something interesting that appeals to the largest possible audience – it could be anything, Google, grave health risks, global warming, the war in iraq, etc.

For more in this, learn how to attract attention from mainstream media.

2. Find a common thread between the *interesting* and your *boring* content. The most important component is the title (see Michael Gray’s post on title bait) but you also need quality content to back it up.

3. Prep your linkbait for social media goodness. Make it easy for your readers (and especially readers from social media sites) to share your article, make it visually appealing (these two posts on formatting blog posts are good, standard advice for linkbait formatting as well).

Once you can master the art of making uninteresting content interesting using this process of association, the rest of the social promotion stuff is relatively easy to implement. Then, all you need are friends to digg your linkbait…

This article was written on 13 Dec 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Ten ways to get more done in less time

Web entrepreneurs, especially those who work outside the confines of the traditional workspace, often have trouble managing their time.

This article proves 10 time-tested methods to get more work done than before AND free up the time we tend to ‘borrow’ from outside our work schedule.

These suggestions are work well for bloggers, entrepreneurs and especially anyone whose work routine needs to be flexible because of their family / social circumstances. The key is to integrate these habits into your daily routine, otherwise it’s not going to bring you any results.

GENERAL TIPS

These are general habits that set the foundation for increasing productivity and using your time effectively.

1. Time & Task Chunking
There are two things you must start doing right now:

Think of the time available to you in ‘chunks’ or ‘blocks’.
Group related tasks together, and assign them time chunks.

Working on related tasks in the same time chunk makes it possible for you to get through those tasks faster than you would otherwise as your mind becomes attuned to doing a specific type of task. You might have heard the tip on writing your blog posts for the week / day in one go – this works because once your writing juices get flowing, it’s easier for you to write that second and third article for the day / week.

Why time chunks? I’ve discussed in detail later, but in essence the idea is to a) break down your work day into manageable time periods (input, output or just processing) and b) help you concentrate better on your work.

2. Smarter Email Management
Ideally you should be checking email just once a day – however in practice this is a difficult habit to adopt from the start, so I recommend restricting yourself to 2 checks – once in the morning to deal with the urgent stuff and once in the evening to answer emails, etc.

Daniel has more on effective email management. A great tip from the article is to NOT read your emails unless you’re ready to deal with them (reply, take an action based on it, etc). Usually what happens is that we tend to read an email once and then don’t take action on it for a few hours (or days). That leaves an open loop in our work cycle – either you’ll keep being reminded of unfinished business by looking at that unattended email or you’ll have it floating around in your head.

Only read an email if you’re ready to take immediate action on it. This is why I suggest splitting your email checking time into two steps – urgent and regular processing. Scan email headlines to pick out urgent matters and discipline yourself to leave the rest for later, when you can go through each email and deal with it there and then.

A last word on email – learn to write emails that deal with such simple follow-up questions as ‘what if this happens?’ or ‘how do I do that?’. Close possible loops by discussing alternative scenarios and solutions, as well as providing references in advance in case someone needs to know how to do a particular task.

3. Say No To Feed Abuse
Earlier this year I wrote an article on Search Engine Journal on why you should dump 90% of the feeds you read. At that time, I was spending 2-4 hours every day just browsing through feeds, and at the end of it I’d have so much in my head that I would find it difficult to sift through the unimportant stuff and focus my thoughts on the important, bloggable material.

Since then, I’ve dumped my feed reader altogether. I now rely on 2 types of news sources – editorially-aggregated news (a good example of this is the Search Engine Land’s SearchCap) and my network of contacts who end up emailing / IMing me the the hottest news. I wouldn’t make a living as a news blogger this way but in terms of ‘winning back’ time that can be invested elsewhere, this approach is an absolute must.

You don’t have to dump your feed reader, but cut down to reading aggregated roundups of your niche (and if there isn’t anyone doing that currently, that’s a perfect opening for you in that niche).

4. Downtime = Networking?
Schedule some downtime for your self during the day – afternoon is a good slot, so is late night after you’re done with everything else (including planning for the next day). By downtime I’m not talking about taking a break, I’m talking about indulging yourself in IMing and random web browsing – putting aside time for IMing is one way to get the most out of the exercise, especially because the short time forces you to do the important things first (including networking, of course).

Some people will disagree with this approach, and I admit that I’m quite often online all day, if only because these days me and Ryan are coordinating a few Perf projects. In such cases I’m only available to chat for one or two people and with everyone else, I’ll have to wait till the important stuff gets done first. It’s hard but it’s the only way to eliminate the distractions that get in our way and stop us from getting work done.

5. ‘Heavy Lifting’
Set aside time daily for some heavy lifting – i.e. intensive work. You don’t have to do this at the same time every day (although in terms of building your rhythm and improving productivity that surely helps) but you should allocate the same amount of hours to it every day.

The ideal solution for me is to have two ‘heavy lifting’ chunks – one in early / late morning and the other either late afternoon or early evening (never at night). This allows me to start the day off by getting a good chunk of my work complete, and before the day is over I’ve done everything for that day, giving me time to enjoy the rest of the day and obviously plan for the next day ahead of time as well.

6. Input / Output / Processing
I’ve started thinking of a typical work cycle as 3 distinct phases.

Input: Any task that involves the intake of information. Browsing, feed-reading, etc are input-oriented activities.
Output: Any task that involves you producing something – blogging, programming, designing, etc.
Processing: When you’re dealing with ideas, knocking off action items, planning for the next day or evaluating progress.

In practice, you want to limit your inputs to the ‘absolutely necessary’ and maximise your output. Most of the time we spend our day the other way around – reading a lot and doing / writing very little. In terms of achieving your goals, that’s a brain-dead approach – why would take up any habit where you’re deliberately limiting the amount of work you can get done?

Sometimes people don’t segregate processing from their input / output states. I disagree – it’s vital that you set aside time for processing your inputs as well as for planning what needs to be done in the future. The processing phase is key to giving your perspective on what you’ve done, what you want to do next and how to get that done.

Like the concepts earlier, thinking of your work cycle in terms of these 3 phases will help you focus on why you’re doing certain tasks and therefore help you get the most out of your time.

WHEN WORKING / HEAVY LIFTING

The 6 tips mentioned above concern basic habits. From #1 and #5, you’ll remember the concepts of time chunking and heavy lifting. The rest of this article concerns tips on how to make the most out of your working time, especially the time when you need to be 110% productive.

7. Stay Offline
Turn off your browser, your IMs, etc. If you’re blogging and need access to feeds, open all the required web pages in your browser and then disconnect.

There are two major problems when you’re online and blogging / writing / programming / strategising at the same time: one, you have the option of distracting yourself, and two, you’re leaving yourself open to the possibility of being distracted by someone / something else (a news item popping up in your feed reader, an email).

I can hear you saying – ‘what if its important?’ Sure, it probably is, but you’re smart enough to know that the work you’re supposed to be doing is certainly important, while something that you might miss in those 3-4 hours is most likely not important. You’re most likely not missing much by going offline, but you’re definitely losing a lot by dividing your attention.

Of course, there are obvious exceptions. However for 95% of us, those exceptions are just theoretical (we’re not as special, essential or important as we like to think).

8. Turn Off Your Phone
I don’t know about you, but phone interruptions are the worst when I’m blogging. Whether it’s a message or a call, even the one minute it takes to shift focus from one thing to the other and then bringing it back can have you lose your momentum, pushing you back by 5-10 minutes or more.

Turn your phone off, or at least on silent and train yourself to ignore the phone. When blogging, check your phone between blog posts if you absolutely must, not during.

What if it’s an emergency? Like I said earlier, our imagination paints the world far worse than it really is. In case of an emergency and especially if there is a real need for you, the person looking for you will find a way to contact you. In any case, keeping two numbers (one for social and professional contacts, one for close friends and family) allows you to turn one off and then you can decide to ignore the second one. This only works if implement it properly and make it clear that the second number is only for emergency use. Drastic, yes, but since you’re only going to be doing this for a few hours each day, it’s worth it.

At the end of the day, us ADD-affected entrepreneurs need every little bit of help they can get.

9. Be Alone While Working
Admittedly this is more of a personal issue – I feel that I cannot work at my best, with full concentration, if someone else is around in the room. From getting distracted by what they’re doing to feeling the urge to strike up pointless conversation, I tend to get very little done when there are people around.

To get the most work done, find a quite spot where you can be alone. If that’s not possible, try ensuring that your immediate physical area is clear and free of distractions.

If all else fails, chain yourself to the desk and lock yourself in the room until you get work done.

10. Deadlines
When faced with a project, nothing ruins it more than having a deadline far into the future. Break your projects down into smaller, bite-sized tasks and set impossibly short deadlines for getting them done. You’ll find that not only do you psychologically motivate yourself into getting things done quicker, you’re probably doing less work than you would if you approached it as a large chunk and set aside weeks or months to get it done.

Process each project, break it down, and get it done as quickly as possible.

(Bonus) 11. One Thing At A Time
This part is especially for those people who claim to be multi-taskers. I’m sorry, but there’s no such thing as multi-tasking.

If you plan your work in advance, you’ll never be rushed enough that you need to do 2 things at the same time.
And if you concentrate on one thing and get it done before moving to the second, you’ll get both of them done faster than if you tried to ‘multi-task’.

If you’ve lived all your life multi-tasking, it’s possible that you’ve achieved some success because of that approach. Unfortunately, multi-tasking is an emergency, short-term response to a failure of planning and a product of panic. It slows you down, and as a long-term strategy it’s just stopping you from planning your tasks properly.

Multi-tasking forces you to be inefficient and unproductive. Don’t fall into / stay in this trap.

Summing It Up
I hope you found the above tips useful. Following any one of these tips will immediately boost your productivity, but when you start applying several of them together is when you will see the real benefits – these tips were far better in tandem than they do on their own.

Comments are welcome.

Also read: 10 Tips for Razor Sharp Concentration.

This article was originally written on 21 Dec 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Quality vs Success: What is more important for you?

On one hand, you have the burning desire to create something remarkable, memorable, and of sheer quality. It takes time, love and hard work, and you run the risk that it will go unappreciated, for after all you are pandering to your own notion of what needs to be said and done. After all, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, you don’t do art to make money, you do art to make your soul grow.

On the other hand, there’s the real, gut-wrenching need to make money (or any other metric of success – search rankings, pageviews, awards, booty). This is the drive to optimize, to tap into market consciousness, measure what works (and what doesn’t), and to ruthlessly churn out content (or products – define your own output) according to your scientific formula of success (usually translates into PageViews = Money).

We know that quality and success CAN go hand in hand – it’s just that success is easier without if you don’t have to worry about quality and it’s the execution of an idea that makes the real difference, not how good it is.

As a professional blogger and entrepreneur, I face the quality v success challenge every day. There are thousands of blogs in dozens of niches that are doing spectacularly well by following the PageViews = Money formula and are quite successful ventures for their owners, although at their core the product is decidedly third-rate. Reading these blogs angers me because I expect better from the top bloggers, but at the same time there’s an admiration for their unwavering commitment to doing what works and continued amazement at how we overestimate the intelligence of our readers (selfishly, I might add).

So… what’s more important for you – creating quality or creating success?

This article was written on 1 Dec 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Three steps for writing good blog posts

Thord (he of Swedish descent and bearing a reputation for ‘crack’ design skills) writes about the two most important skills a blogger can have.
#2 is knowing how to blow your own horn (‘toot’ is so politically correct it gives me a shiver). Thord discusses it in some detail, and I like this part best:

Some of us have some kind of roadblock built in that stops us from promoting ourselves. Get over it. Or get run over.

The #1 skill Thord talks about is knowing how to write good blog posts. Seeing as how T left the door open there, here’s my two (or three) cents on how one may go about writing ‘good’ blog posts.

Like all good 3 step lists, this one is a model of simplicity:

Define what ‘good’ is – use concrete measurements instead of an arbitrary feel-good factor
Learn how to achieve the results defined above
Execute (and then some).

If it was as easy as writing it above, no blog consultant would have a job. As things stand, there’s a lot more to it under the surface although as I’ve discussed below, once you internalise this formula (or you start writing for a blog that gets tons of traffic) it becomes effortless.

So let’s get started with step 1 – defining what a ‘good’ blog post is.

STEP 1: SET STANDARDS FOR ‘GOOD’ BLOG POSTS

‘Good’ is an arbitrary, unclear objective. One man’s ‘good’ is another man’s masterpiece, while the rest of the population may consider it absolutely crap. You need a precise measurement of what a good blog post is, and for this you will need to know your blog’s key objectives (and your role in achieving them).

Different blogs measure success in different ways. An established celeb gossip blogger would judge success in terms of sheer traffic / long-term search rankings a post brings. A budding car blogger could measure success in terms of the links a post gets. Someone writing on a sports blog geared towards building a strong community could measure success in terms of the # of comments each article generates.

And while we’re at it, there’s also a difference in scale – Seth Godin receives a minimum of 10-20 links for each post that he writes. His baseline for a ‘good’ post would be far higher than for the owner of a newly-launched blog who’d consider 5 links to be a home run.

If you own your blog, then you’re likely to have several different objectives that define success. Comments, Traffic / Pageviews, Links, RSS Subscriptions and Search Rankings are the most common, but you may have something different based on your specific situation. It’s a good thing to have different objectives – it gives you space to write different types of posts and be successful as opposed to doing the same thing over and over again.

If you are blogging for hire / guest blogging, you will most likely have a brief or some instructions on what the blog owner wants from you (you should ask if you’re not told). For example, for one of my blogs I tell my writers that they have to meet one of 3 objectives with each post – get X number of comments, Y amount of traffic or Z number of links.

Set out your stall in terms of the objectives you want to reach, and then attach concrete values on them. You can get a good idea for what values to use if you look at your blog’s recent history and pick out the most successful posts (according to different objectives). For a new blog, you’ll probably have to set a conservative number and then readjust as you go along.

STEP 2: LEARN HOW TO ACHIEVE EACH OBJECTIVE

Do you know how to get more comments to your posts? Do you know how to write posts that attract links?

This step is perhaps the easiest of all 3. There is tons and TONS of blogging advice on the Internet (the fastest way to get started is to head over to the Best of Performancing page), it’s only a matter of finding the right information and using it.

Want more RSS subscribers? Got them here and here. Want better search engine rankings? Got that too.

For any objective that you set yourself in Step 1, you’re likely to find quality, executable advice for achieving that objective on the Internet. And here’s an open offer – if you don’t find it on the Best of Performancing page or by searching through Google, drop a line in the comments and I’ll hunt it down (or write it up) for you.

STEP 3: FOLLOW THE FORMULA

In Step 1, you defined your goals. In Step 2, you figured out how to get there. Now all you have to do is connect the dots. It’s as easy as it sounds, but there are a few things you should be aware of at the start:

A good blog post is mediocre on a poor blog, fabulous on a good blog. Learn how to build a kick-ass blog.
You’ll probably need to revise the targets set in Step 1 soon after starting on this path. That’s ok, don’t fret – if you’re going in the right direction, you’ll only be revising them upwards.
Being a good blogger means building a skill-set. Build your skills, and you’ll have less difficulty in writing good blog posts.
You’ll probably fail miserably in the beginning, or hit a home run and then tank. Whenever you hit your first ‘valley’, don’t give up – that valley is designed by nature to weed out 90% of the ‘cant-hack-it’ folks from the mix. Once you’re able to push through and rise again, you’ll not only be a better blogger but you’ll also be better than most (90%+) other bloggers out there.
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to follow the rules. In this case, following the formula works for a reason. Innovate if you have room for error, play it safe when you don’t (unless you’re feeling lucky).

So there you have it. Three simple steps to write ‘good’ blog posts. These require some work at the start but once you’ve internalised Step 2 (through practice, experience, research and judicious use of bookmarks), it’s simply a matter of picking a target and applying the formula.

At this stage, you might say:
“Ok, so I know how to do all this, but what do I write about?”

Well, I’ve got you covered there as well.

WHAT DO I WRITE ABOUT?

Here are a list of posts that I feel can solve any and all of your blogger’s block problems. Seriously.

10 Killer Post Ideas
Finding and Writing Fresh Blog Content
Blog Pulling Power – Create Flagship Content
How to Beat the Blank Page of Doom
How to Turn Link Posts into Linkbait
11 Reasons to Write When You’ve Misplaced Your Passion
3 Ways to Engineer Good Content
12 Tips for Battling Blogger’s Block
100 Blog Topics I Hope You Write

This article was originally written on 30 Nov 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Three ways to immediately improve your networking skills

Promoting websites online, just like in the offline world, is about finding the right people with the right resources and having them help you get the word out. By yourself, you are nowhere near as effective as when you have a network of contacts and friends working together to help you promote your new venture.

How do we do this? There are three key steps:

Building the network
Making the right contacts
Leveraging the network

This article discusses the above topics and shows you how to build a network of contacts you can use to get more traffic to your website. That’s not the only purpose of such a network – you can use a network in various ways – community intelligence, resource pool, business opportunities, and much more.

In short, if you want to learn how to build your social network of contacts, this article is for you. Read on…

The Big Networking Secret: It’s Easy

Now before we get to the list (I don’t mind if you scroll down, but this next bit sets the foundation for it), let me explain what I mean by “it’s easy“: using your personal social network to promote your website is quite difficult if you don’t have many contacts / the right contacts – saying that social networking doesn’t work because you don’t have influential people on your list is a cop-out. Similarly, you cannot expect to build a list of A-list contacts overnight – building a network of useful contacts takes time; relationships are cultivated and trust is built through reciprocal actions over time.

So what’s easy about it? If you remove the unrealistic expectations and instead focus on the basic principles that can help you build large, influential social networks over time, you’ll find that it’s a relatively simple and straightforward process.

Networking is as easy as making new friends. If you can make new friends, then you can network. But making new friends does take work. So it’s not magic.

At any time, you’ll find successful entrepreneurs using the help of their contacts and friends to launch ventures with brilliant success – there is a method behind this ‘magical’ approach, and you don’t need to buy a $999 course to teach you this method.

The right advice (say, something like this article you’re reading), some common sense (use your own judgment or just ask for help) and concentrated action and commitment will get you more than what an expensive course can teach you.

Alright then – with that out of the way, it’s time to get to the list.

1. Make New Friends By Helping Others

The basis of an effective social network is a steady stream of new contacts – a network doesn’t have any impact unless there are enough people to make a difference.

The habit of making new friends and helping others out without asking for anything upfront is one that takes time to cultivate and your adoption of this habit depends on how you treat others. If you’re naturally outgoing, you’ll find it easier to get in touch with and contact new people. If you don’t have any hangups towards helping others for free, then you’ll be one step ahead when it comes to sowing the seeds of a new relationship.

Find New Friends

This step will stump you but in fact it’s the easiest of them all – simply flock to those places where people of similar interests are hanging out, and make a point to participate in the general discussion. An example of such a place is Performancing, where I and many others have flocked to over the years, gradually become a part of the community and now find new opportunities each day.

The leading blogs in your niche are a good way to get started. Forums (for networking) are a personal favourite because of the amazing returns although they require more commitment and personal involvement to make it work.

Also, remember that in such new communities you’ll find avenues towards other communities as well – it pays to pick and choose those communities where you can find the right balance between value, investment and fun (it doesn’t HAVE to be a chore, you know).

Help Others

Make it a point to provide helpful information / advice / support to at least one person each day. This is a major stumbling block for people because of the personal investment this requires but once you realise multiplier effect that’s attached to each ‘effort’ of yours, you’ll be surprised at why more people aren’t doing this.

Just help others. Quite often you’ll hear people voicing their problems / concerns in public forums / communities that you’ll be frequenting – if it takes a few minutes of your time to point them in the right direction, do it right there and then.

Invest in others. As they grow and build up their resources and their own networks, your own network will be growing as well thanks to their efforts.

It’s also worth pointing out that extra attention (bordering on stalking / invasion of personal privacy) will freak people out, so if you just *love* to help people, you might want to tone things down a bit.

2. Selective Networking: Kiss Ass

Ryan explains this far better than I can in his article, so let’s listen to what he has to say:

I call it selective (back)networking and here’s the idea: the internet is just like any other human network. There are hierarchies of authority. If you want to be successful, you need to move up the hierarchy.

…

The key to building a (back)network is to intentionally and selectively seek out people who 1) have power and leverage 2) are smart and capable and 3) are fair in their online relationships. By building up a social “backbone” of good friends in high-places, you’ll be able to execute your plans a lot faster, realize profit a lot quicker, and avoid burn-out a lot easier (ten shoulders are better than one).

“But Ryan Caldwell, you’re already successful. What about those of us who are just getting started?”

Suck up and kiss ass.

That’s it. That’s how you get into my good graces. Start doing me favors and I’ll send some love your way. Ask me to do you a favor before you’ve proven your worthiness to me, and I’ll ignore you. Completely and utterly ignore you. But if you’ve got something to offer me, something that I truly benefit from…then you’ve got a friend.

This isn’t easy advice to follow – especially if you’ve skipped step 1, where you adopt the mindset of making new friends and helping people. On the other hand, once you realise the value that networking brings to you, the natural progression is to go after the right contacts.

Identify Powerful Contacts

Why do you think people bend over backwards when it comes to internet celebrities like John Chow and Matt Cutts? These people have an influential, authoritative voice in the blogosphere. When they talk, people listen. When they point, people follow.

Your end game is to have people like these on your side, so that they point to you and people (and traffic and revenue) start flowing in your direction.

Identify the powerful contacts in your niche (and in niches related to it) – then figure out how to get in their good books.

Make Yourself Valuable First

As Ryan says, you have to prove your own value to people who are vastly more influential than you – this translates into building your own online worth by playing with the smaller fish first. It’s a step-by-step process – you won’t shoot for Darren Rowse if you can’t get into Deb’s good books, so work your way up the ladder by gathering momentum.

Chris Garrett’s excellent article on ‘Positioning‘ is a good intro into how to make yourself and your website more valuable.

3. Learn and Practice the Art of Following Up

It’s one of those things that you learn from experience, although recently a friend (and new influential contact) Steve Amoia drove this point home when we were talking about building a network of contacts in the footballing world.

The basic idea is this: every time you ask your network (or a contact) for their help, follow up by thanking them for their input, giving them as much credit as possible and by reciprocating the favor when asked for. If you want to by cynical about it, then consider that people don’t mind helping as long as they see a benefit in it – whether it’s the other person stoking their ego or a reciprocation of that favor or even a monetary benefit.

Learn what your contacts value and when following up, reciprocate in a way that they will appreciate the most.

And to borrow from Nick’s excellent “increase search engine traffic” article:

Be generous – if you respect your network, and work hard to be part of the community surrounding your topic, the rewards can really pay off — never abuse it, it tends to backfire in all kinds of horrible ways.

Wrapping Up

Online marketing is about people and long-term results, not about algorithms or short-term gains. If you start investing in your social network now, you’ll reap the benefits many times over in the future.

This article was written on 29 Nov 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Ten networking tips for non-US bloggers

As a blogger residing in a third world country, networking opportunities are limited for me. Logistical problems mean that it is bloody hard to hop over to the US for conferences – and in many cases, us non-US bloggers are at a disadvantage in terms of real networking opportunities.

However, if you’re a non-US blogger (or a non-US/UK blogger), there are several other networking opportunities available for you. Let’s start with the easiest, managing online networking.

It goes without saying that for maximum success, you need to set goals, figure out the best way to achieve them and then get busy moving from point A to point B. It’s the same with networking.

A. ONLINE NETWORKING

Harness the power of email, instant messaging, forums, blogging, Skype, LinkedIn and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Embrace the online medium and learn how everything works and how you can use it to your benefit.

Some tips:

1. Write Effective Emails

There’s great advice on this subject by Merlin Mann, Guy Kawasaki and the Seton Hill University.

While you should practice the Tim Ferriss formula for dealing with email, it also helps that when you actually do read and reply to your email you do it in a manner that gleans maximum results AND doesn’t require you to go back and forth like you would in an informal IM session.

2. Treat IM conversations as ‘Deadline’ Meetings

Set an agenda before you start, deal with all issues and come out with a plan of action by the end of the conversation. In fact, you should adopt this mindset for every business-related discussion you have, not just IMs.

Like I’ve said earlier, there are times when IM becomes a necessity. However in 99% of the cases, IM is a means to an end. When you’re networking, you have limited time and more importantly you want to deliver value, not just waste the other person’s time.

There is one exception – beyond initial contact, there is always a time when you need to build a good rapport with your contacts, and sometimes the least time-consuming method to do so is IM (I can hold 6 conversations on IM at the same time, I can’t do that on the phone).

3. Master Online Social Networks

The rewards are amazing (and I’m not talking about being a Digg power user). The contacts and relationships you build by participating in forums and social networks are invaluable plus the sheer speed of the social web makes it possible for you to find out about breaking news in real time (if your work depends on being first with the news or acting quickly on new information, this is again critical).

4. Online is NOT Everything

Despite our reliance on the Internet, nothing beats a face-to-face meet or a talk on the phone in terms of building trust. I remember how I had introduced myself to Liz at the beginning and she refused to help me until we’d talked and she could confirm that I was a real person (I think the charming voice helped as well ).

The point is, contact and relationship building is incomplete without the human element. In the absence of a physical meeting, use Skype or Google Talk to talk to your contacts and build strong relationships.

B. DEVELOP A LOCAL NETWORK

Living online is a major obstacle if you want to build a network of business contacts in the real world where you live. Most people will still prefer doing business face-to-face if they can make it happen, and that leaves you with no excuse to not pursue building a local network of contacts in your city / country.

Some suggestions:

5. Use Online Networks To Find Local Contacts

I’ve used my blogging, forums and LinkedIn to attract local business and contacts, and I wasn’t even trying to do that at the time.
Use LinkedIn, Facebook, the blogging interweb and forums (as well as any / all contacts you have) to discover local contacts. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you find.

6. Meet Recruiters

Recently I had the opportunity to meet a local recruiter. Usually I’d shun such contacts at first thought, because the last thing on my mind is to work for a ‘boss’. However, recruiting companies also offer you the chance to build your assets – that is, acquire access to a resource pool that you can later use as leverage for your own projects or any outsourcing project that you happen to snag as a consultant.

Yesterday I was talking to an entrepreneur who wants to take over the world (not literally) and he asked me if I knew any good programmers – I told him I had access to a recruiting company and his eyes lit up (I’m assuming, of course, since he was sitting in the US).

Don’t pass up opportunities to build your assets. Not only will they help you in your projects in the future but they will also make you more valuable as a contact, which will eventually mean that people will come to you instead of the other way around.

7. Meet Local Reps

Have you met folks working for Google in your country? I suggest you seek them out and do so at the first opportunity. While the setup is different depending on which country you’re living in, chances are that you’ll be able to network with people from Google / Yahoo / Microsoft / etc etc at local conferences, seminars and trade shows.

From my (very limited) experience, local reps are almost always evangelists and as a result have a vast array of contacts and opportunities themselves. Get in, make yourself useful and nurture the relationship.

C. THE ART OF SUCCESSFUL NETWORKING

For all the tips and advice, the important bits are foundational and have little to do with networking itself – I’m not here to preach how you should conduct yourself, on the other hand these traits will amplify your networking efforts.

8. Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Have you ever met a person who talks a big game but at the end of the day they rarely have anything to show for it? Would you recommend such a person as a business contact to your network?

Talking a good game is important, but it’s even more important to have the track record to back you up.

9. Be Open and Available

The Internet is a blessing and a curse – it gives us instant access to everything but it also makes us anonymous (some might say that’s a blessing in disguise). It also hits your social life quite hard, so you’ll have to make an extra effort to get your butt out of your chair and move out of your house to meet people.

When it comes to networking, especially when you’re starting out, you need to make it as easy as possible for people to contact you and be ready to meet / talk to new people whenever the opportunity arises. It’s more of a mindset than a habit.

Of course, there’s the obvious exception – if you’re as busy as Matt Cutts or Brad Callen and you’re getting more than 5 emails a minute, you probably need several filters (read: assistants) in between you and people wanting to talk to you (with the odd IM / separate email account for ‘urgent / private’ stuff).

10. Understand How People Tick

You’re in the peoples’ business, so you need to know how people think, act and react and modify your approach accordingly. This is one of those cases where reading that self-help stuff works (make friends, influence people and all that). Learn it, practice it and use this knowledge to your advantage.

So there you have it – solid, actionable advice to improve your networking even if you can’t attend those cool conferences that all the big boys seem to be going to. If you’re looking for a shortcut, here’s the best bet (even better than attending local meets, which was so obvious that I refuse to mention it in the 10 points above): hitch a ride as a consultant with a local firm who will send you to such a conference. Alternatively, sign up as a consultant / contractor to a US-based firm who would (cross your fingers) eventually call you to a meet / training seminar / etc.

What is your #1 networking tip?

This article was originally written on 16 Nov 2007 on Performancing.com.