Why Do So Many Blogs Fail? The Same Reason Businesses Do!

Last week, I signed up for what looks to be a cool new service called SeededBuzz (I saw that a few of my friends had “liked” their ad on Facebook, so score 1 for the effectiveness of Facebook ads).  The basic idea is that you can submit your best blog posts (called “planting a seed”) , and other bloggers can pick up on the theme and write posts of their own based on your “seed” post (otherwise known as “buzzing” your “seed”).  Once you get a handle on the goofy terminology, it can be a great way to meet, connect with, and befriend other bloggers.  And it works!

Meet Tia Peterson, creator of BizChickBlogs.  Tia knows her stuff: she’s been designing websites and messing with WordPress since graduating college, although she won’t tell us how long ago that was.  Her tips and advice for bloggers are spot on.  I met Tia via (heh…that rhymes) SeededBuzz, and this is why I love blogging: it’s all about the connections!

Anyhow, a few weeks ago Tia wrote a post that considered the question of why so many blogs fail.  I think that’s an interesting question, especially considering my new Blog Whisperer project.  The reason I started MyBlogWhisperer.com was the fact that so many of the blogs I was setting up for people were left vacant once they were completed.  When I would ask the owners of said blogs what was going on, I’d get different versions of the same answer: they felt like they didn’t have anything worth saying.

And I think that’s the number one reason most blogs fail: FEAR.  So many of us have been filling our heads with negative self-talk for so long that we refuse to believe that anyone would want to hear anything we have to say.  I’m here to tell you, though, that they do!  Believe it or not, there are thousands of people just like you who are looking for someone to give voice to their thoughts and feelings.  That someone can be you, if you’ll just get out of your own way.

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Posturing Is For Posers, Not For You

pos·tur·ing

1 : to assume a posture; especially : to strike a pose for effect
2 : to assume an artificial or pretended attitude

This post has been stewing in my brain for days, and I think it’s about time I get it out.  If it seems a little disjointed, well, consider the source.

I’m calling out the “fake it ’til you make it crowd”; I think it’s time to put that idea to rest.  While the philosophy seemed like a good one at first blush, I’m beginning to understand that “faking it” is just another way of hiding from the fear of being open, honest and transparent.

The thought is that by pretending you’ve already arrived at the destination, somehow the journey will be less arduous and time-consuming.  If you’ll just act like a successful business person (i.e. “fake it”), so the theory goes, people will assume that you are a successful businessperson and will want to do business with you (i.e. you’ll “make it”).  Sounds good, right?  You can move to the front of the class without doing any homework or passing any tests; who wouldn’t want to do that?  Where do I sign up?

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The Secret to Ultimate Satisfaction: I’m Just Going to Be Me… – Guest Post by Dan Waldschmidt

Guest Blogger Dan Waldschmidt

I’m just going to be me.

I am tired of being the person that you think I should be.  I’m just going to be the best “me” possible.

And isn’t that what you really want from me?

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If You Motivate An Idiot… – Guest Post by Carl Taylor

Carl Taylor, Entrepreneur and Author

There are a lot of websites and speakers that are trying to motivate you. They motivate you to take action, to get off your ass and achieve more. But if you’re an idiot and someone motivates you, you are now just a motivated idiot, and you are going to do idiotic things faster.

Motivated idiots are those people who go to their first property seminar, hear a sales pitch disguised as education that says you must invest right now in this off the plan unit block, immediately sign on the dotted line and a few years later wonder why they don’t have the returns they expected.

I’m not meaning to have a go at seminar selling, or even property seminars; they are viable business methods and have their place.  What you should be focusing on is “their first” as in it was their first seminar. The presenter did a great job and got them motivated, but at this stage they were just a motivated idiot and they made an idiotic decision because they didn’t know what questions to ask.

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Put Some Heart In Your Marketing…It’s Good for Business!

When I say this has been an interesting week, you should understand that I’m probably making one of the most egregious understatements of my life so far.  Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that my vision of who I am and what I do has been shattered and rebuilt over the course of the past few days.  It wasn’t as bad as it sounds; in fact, it was just what the doctor ordered.

For the past several years, I’ve thought of myself (and promoted myself) as something of a sales expert.  I want very badly and am working very hard to travel the country and the world revitalizing the lives and careers of salespeople everywhere, to be the sales trainer of choice for organizations everywhere.

I have a great WHAT: a system I call HERO Selling, which you can learn about elsewhere on this blog.  HERO Selling is, I’m sure, going to change the face of sales for decades to come.  I realize that belief is stupidly optimistic, and I’m OK with that.

I also have a great HOW.  My vision is to talk about the things no one else is talking about, to bring topics like character, honesty and spirituality to the forefront of the conversation about what makes a great salesperson.

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The “Secret Sauce” for Sales Success

For over a century, since the invention of selling as a profession, really, salespeople have been looking for the secret formula that would get more customers to buy.  They’ve developed sales processes and interview practices and presentation styles and closing techniques, and still they’re frustrated by the lack of results.  Countless millions of dollars are spent every year on books and training programs in an effort to uncover the secret to sales success.

Well, today is your lucky day: I’m going to tell you the secret to selling more than you ever have before, and I’m not even going to charge you for the information.  Sounds good?  Okay, here we go.

Before we get to it, though, let me warn you right now that you’re not going to believe that it could be so easy and obvious, which may cause you to ignore what I’m about to say.  Don’t ignore it, though.  Do your best to quiet the part of your brain that’s going to resist.  Take some time to evaluate the information, answer the questions presented, and see for yourself whether it makes a difference in your results.  If it doesn’t feel free to come back and call me an idiot…but not before you’ve tried it out.   So now, here we go:

Do something you believe in.

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Revelation: Everyone Else Is As Scared As I Am

OK, first things first.  I played a little hooky on the blog last week and  have gone a whole twelve days without posting.  I won’t bore you with the details; suffice it to say that I took on one too many projects and overwhelmed myself a bit.  Oddly enough, it was nice to have so much going on.

It feels like every possible good thing is happening at once: new products are being created (and sold!) over at Great Little Book Publishing, the Motivation 101 Blog was featured in the Sacramento Bee as their “Blog of the Week” last week, and everywhere I turn, projects I’ve been working on are starting to come together better than I ever dreamed they would.  I have a lot to be grateful for, no doubt, and one of the things I’m most grateful for right now in my life is the fact that people are actually interested in reading what I write.

It’s no secret to anyone here that I struggle with feelings of inadequacy from time to time.  What really comes as a surprise to me, though, is how many people I meet who feel the same way.

Just tonight, I was chatting with a friend of mine who has been gearing up to launch a new coaching program that is sure to explode the business of anyone who’s fortunate enough to grab one of the 12 available spots she’ll open up later this year (and yes, that’s real scarcity because she can only work one-on-one with that many people at once).  This is an extremely talented person who has demonstrated her ability to get results time and again, and yet she admitted to me that one of her most difficult challenges has been and continues to be the feeling that she’s not good enough to pull it off.

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Guest Post: Todd’s #1 Time Saving Tip for 2010

If you’re not going to put 100% effort into doing a great job then don’t do your job. Just stay home. Catch up on some sleep. Take the day and vege. Heck, take the rest of your career off.

While that’s a pretty rough statement, in this “value-driven world” it’s very appropriate. Luckily there’s a positive side to it as well.

Very early on my grandfather drilled the need to “do your job well” into my head. His favorite one-liner was, “If you don’t have the time to do it right the first time how are you ever going to have the time to do it over?” (And believe me, if he thought it wasn’t right you DID do it over.) Lucky Strikes and Jim Beam aside, my grand-dad was a wise man.

He also taught me to shake hands the proper way, to remember names, and always say “thank you”. He never read an email and probably wouldn’t have made it as long as he did if somebody had sent him a TXT message. If he were alive today I’m sure he’d be labeled a renaissance man.

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Want a Better Life? Become a Better Reader!

“That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zandavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.” – Henry David Thoreau in Walden

I know he wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I’m pretty sure Thoreau was talking about the internet when he wrote those words. We have the greatest repository of information the world has ever seen, right at our fingertips. That said, we should be the best-read generation of all time…but we’re not. A study conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2004 found that fewer than half of American adults read literature for pleasure. Fewer than half!

That’s a stunner, particularly considering the overwhelming evidence that being an avid reader is the one thing that most successful people have in common. Self-education by reading great books is a key to your personal development, which has to come before you can hope to make improvements in other areas of your life.

Understand this: if you want to improve your lot in life, you’re going to have to get in the habit of reading. A lot. Every day. Sorry: the fact that you don’t enjoy reading is entirely irrelevant. You’ll get used to it, and you’ll probably even start to like it after awhile. It may (and probably will) become one of your favorite activities. You’ll begin to wonder what you did all those years before you realized how delightful a good book can be.

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The Fight Club Solution to the Current Economic Slump

It seems like I’m finding more and more occasions to quote Edward Norton’s character at the end of the movie “Fight Club”: after realizing he’s been suffering from a split personality, brawling with the other personality, and, ultimately, shooting himself in the mouth to get rid of his other personality (oh, and did I mention blowing up San Francisco’s financial district?), he turns to his girlfriend and says “You met me at a very strange time in my life.”

That’s what I keep wanting to tell the people around me: you met me at a very strange time in my life.  Changing careers, starting new ventures and partnerships, reconsidering long-standing relationships, trying to keep my head above water and reprogramming my unconscious mind has made for a very interesting couple of years, to say the least.  Here’s the thing, though: I know I’m not alone.

If there’s one good thing that’s come out of the economic upheaval of the past year or so, it’s the fact that so many of us are stopping to re-examine what’s truly important in our lives.  Sure, the answers have been pretty startling to some of us, but it’s been a cleansing that’s been a long time coming.  We’ve been so caught up in the material and mundane for the last decade that a lot of us forgot who we really are and what truly matters to us.

I’m not saying that we need to start shaving our heads and pummeling each other in basements and parking lots in the middle of the night.  What we do need, though, is a good healthy dose of temporary insanity, a chance to step back from the routine of life and have a look at the ruts we’re wearing into our souls.

Continue reading The Fight Club Solution to the Current Economic Slump…