Jeff Goins's Blog, page 53

How to Write Blog Posts That Go Viral (without Selling Out)

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Anna Guerrero, the Content Editor at Canva. Anna’s favorite part of her job is facilitating learning through storytelling.

One of the hardest things about starting a new blog is the torturous wait so see if people click on your content and read it. Let alone dreaming about going viral.

Photo Credit: photoacumen via Compfight cc

So how then, do random list generating, meme aggregating publications like BuzzFeed manage to do it every day?

The truth? It’s not luck. It’s strategy. Abhishek does a great job of breaking down BuzzFeed’s “magic formula.”

If you’re thinking: “I don’t want to be like BuzzFeed,” I get it. At Canva, neither did we. We wanted to give real value. But when we received more than 70k shares on our first viral Design School post we had a realization about what it, and every other viral post had in common. It was the result of a highly customized content strategy.

NOTE: This post is over 3000 words. You can download it for future reference and get access to other recommended resources for free here.

To give you some context, 60 days ago we decided to change our strategy. Compared to the same time before, our traffic increased 226%.

The orange line is before the change, and the blue line is after. That huge spike? That’s our viral post.

Like BuzzFeed, we didn’t rely on sheer luck to make a post go viral. We engineered a powerful content strategy that consistently generated more traffic across more than 20 posts. If I had to credit the growth to one single factor, I would say we did it by understanding our target audience. Truly understanding them.

And then we got lucky.

I’m going to walk you through the key changes we made to do it — and explain how you can too.

Step #1: Scratch your goal of making your posts go viral (and figure out how to give value)

Take your goal of going viral and write it down on a piece of paper.

Then, screw that piece of paper up and throw it in the trash. Because it’s time for you to shift your goal to adding value to your audience.

Let me explain: The Canva Design School blog launched with a vision: to teach and inspire people to learn design.

That in itself made the blog quite successful. In the first 60 days after we launched it, we achieved 269,714 sessions. And our traffic was already up in the six figures.

Not a bad effort for any newbie blog, right?

But none of our blog posts ever went viral, no matter how hard we tried. And believe me, we tried! So what was holding us back?

We had this vision that sounded great, but it wasn’t enough. We needed concrete, driven goals to get us there. So, first, we had to flesh out what exactly our main goal was. It was simple:

Create the best possible content to teach and inspire people about design.

What could we do to achieve that? Well we set ourselves three small, yet powerful, goals to take us closer:

Understand more about our readers: Who they are, and what they want (more on that in the next section).
Collect data to make informed decisions: So we didn’t have to rely on our gut, we could rely on the facts.
Improve the content we create: Creating articles that align with what our readers need.

In the next steps of this article, you’re going to learn how we reached these goals, and how you can too.

Step #2: Reverse engineer your competitor’s content

To improve our content and add the most value, we needed to understand two important factors:

Who they are
What they want

How did we do that? Simple. By finding out what content they’re interested in, and why.

But first, just who are your competitors? Every blog has competition. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be a worthwhile niche to write about, would it?

For us, our competitors split into two categories:

Product competition
Blogosphere competition

Depending on your niche, you’ll probably have a similar split. Our focus was on the blogosphere competition; those well-written blogs sharing the design space.

But for your own blog, you’re going to have to make your best judgement on that.

If you’re not sure who your competitors are – especially if you’re blogging for a company, like I am – it’s worth doing your research to find out who is successfully writing for the audience you want to reach.

Thankfully, all of that information is just a Google search away.

How to reverse engineer content (the easy way)

Have you heard of BuzzSumo? It’s a content creator’s best friend, and it’s been a key piece of the puzzle of how we create content.

You can search for any piece of content under any: site, niche, genre or topic for the past year, and see how it performed based on social shares.

To inform your new strategy, you’ll need to search a range of topics and keywords. To show you how how to do it, I’m going to run you through a topic close to the heart of our readers – creativity.

A quick search on BuzzSumo shows the most shared articles on the topic:

Now what can we learn from the highest shared articles about creativity?

Articles focused on people do well
Readers are interested in the effects of creativity

With that information we can take it one step further and get more specific about the topic. Let’s look at how well articles about creative people do:

Look carefully. There’s two results there that stand out, and fit our audience perfectly:

From this I know a few things about these articles:

They will fit my audience, because they care about creativity
The topics are highly engaging
They fit our editorial research (more on that in Step #4)

That means that our interpretation of this article get the green light for our blog:

When it went online as 10 Things Highly Creative People Do Differently, it got almost 5000 shares in a matter of days. A great example of how competitor research can help you create powerful content.

What about original editorial direction?

If you’re worried that competitor research just means “copying other content,” don’t be.

If it were that easy, everybody would do it. To make your articles better quality, more interesting and startlingly thought provoking – that’s where your talented editor comes in. The topics you find from your research are just a start. The new direction the article needs to take is in their hands.

The other reason an editor is invaluable for your content strategy is to supplement your competitor research with original editorial ideas.

Now, some people might disagree with me, but this doesn’t mean brainstorming your ideas on a whiteboard. Drop your ego. Just because you think they’re good doesn’t mean your readers will too.

What do I do? I find out what what my audience really wants to read about.

Quora is the perfect place to do that. By finding out which question threads are the most popular, you’ll be able to gauge which topics people are most interested in.

Following on from the previous example, let’s take a look at what the people on Quora think about Creative People:

Again, there’s lots of people talking about creative people. But, how can that change our approach to the article?

See that little grey star next to the top result on that image – that means Quora have highlighted that thread as having high quality results. Let’s have a click and see what they’re talking about:

Okay, so it’s not exactly the cheeriest list in the world about creative types – but it’s got a lot of good responses (upvotes and comments) from the Quora community.

But, mainly, it gives us a lot of scope for different slants on the topic. For example:

10 Things Only Highly Creative People Would Understand
12 Qualities Only Creative People Have
15 Problems Only Creative People Have To Live With

And for the editors out there that like to be really thorough add this step.

Triple check that your topic is a winner by doing a Keyword Planner search for the search term. I’ve done this below for the term “creative people.” Not only can we can see that it’s a topic with a large density of monthly searches – there’s another bonus. It has low competition, too.

By following these three steps, not only are you addressing a topic your audience is already talking about, but providing a fresh slant for your topic too. All while choosing your content from an educated place.

FREE RESOURCES: Download this whole case study and get access to resources recommended by Canva. Get them free here.
Step #3: Put yourself in your reader’s shoes

Have you ever pictured what you’re writing from your audience’s perspective?

Not through the worried gaze of a writer, or the laser-focused eyes of an editor. But, through the eyes of the person who’s going to trade five minutes of their time to read your blog post.

If not, it’s time to start. Because once you can see your blog from their side it’s much easier to create content they want. The steps above are the foundations of achieving this, but I like to take it one step further.

Go ahead and ask them

It sounds simple when you say it, right? But it’s easy to forget that you can actually go out and ask your audience what they’d like to see.

When we started our new strategy, I started writing personal emails to everyone on our mailing list, asking them what they struggled with in their businesses, and what they wanted to read more about.

The response was phenomenal. Not only did people come back to me with the type of content they wanted, they came back with specific topics they were looking for, too.

What an amazing insight. In some cases (as seen here) your fans responses can also reassure you that your content strategy is on the right track. Lucky for this reader, I could direct her to an article we wrote some months back: 12 Ways to Defeat Creative Block and Generate New Ideas.

Use BuzzSumo to find what else they’re reading

Your readers are pretty transparent about what they like. And if they’re sharing your articles, chances are they’re going to be sharing other people’s content too.

These sharing habits are the perfect window into the lives of your audience, and you can see exactly what kind of content they’re looking for and what else they like to read.

Let me walk you through it:

Let’s say I take the article I talked about in the last step, the one about creativity, and put it into BuzzSumo. It shows me all the stats of how and where it was shared. But, there’s a button here that’s easy to miss, but has a lot of power.

That’s the View Sharers button:

Simply click on this, and it will show you all the people who have shared your article on twitter:

Then – and this is where the magic happens – you can find all the information about other articles they’ve shared by clicking the View Links Shared button:

Now, you not only know who is sharing your articles, but you know the types of content they’re interested in too!

The more you know about your readers, the more impact you can have with your content. And, you can even find some of the competitors you were searching for in step one too.

Step #4: Use data to inform your judgement

When I went to journalism school, I was taught a lot about writing. How to write for an audience. What makes good writing. The power of editing.

All of which has, evidently, come in handy for me as the Editor of the Design School Blog. But I’ve learned two important lessons since November that no school could ever teach me:

Content creation should be backed by data: No guesswork or hit and hope strategies. It’s more effective to make data-driven choices that you know are going to work.
Content should come from a deep understanding of your audience: Like you saw in the last section, the more you know about your readers, the better the content you can create.

So, how did we collect the data for our decisions at Canva? We did a lot of painstaking research — about 6 gallons of coffee worth — to find out everything we could about the content our audience wants.

Here’s what we managed to put together:

The big bonus to all of this? You can quiet the nagging little voice in your mind that says, “This isn’t going to work!”

By using the information from that checklist, we’ve been able to create more valuable and targeted content to great effect.

Step #5: Start experimenting with your headlines

Headlines are one of the most important parts of your article.

But it doesn’t matter how many books, articles or webinars you find to learn about headlines; until you’ve tested them with your audience, you just don’t know what’s going to work.

Trust me, we learned this the hard way.

Take the article we wrote that actually went viral: Why Everyone From Beethoven, Goethe, Dickens, Darwin To Steve Jobs Took Long Walks and Why You Should Too.

The first time we posted it online, it didn’t really do, well…anything.

The first headline we wrote for it, “Why Steve Jobs Took Long Walks and Why You Should Too” just didn’t perform. Even though we followed all the headline ‘rules’ we thought we were supposed to.

Once we made the change, the article soared to over 70,000 shares.

Maybe our audience are all Windows users? Who knows. Actually, who cares? It’s beside the point.

The point is that it’s important to test – and retest – to get as much data as you can on the headlines that work for your audience. One small tweak, and you could unleash a viral article on the world!

Step #6: Use more images

There’s a lot to be said about using visual content in your articles. That’s because it’s a really powerful tool:

They get 94% more views than those without
Images can more than double your articles shares
104% more comments than the average post

Originally, we did what most bloggers do. Focus on creating an attractive banner image and hope to gain traction that way.

But when we started to do our research, we found that images only give all of these benefits if you understand the type of images your audience respond to.

Through looking at our competitors we found that they:

Had eye catching featured images
Used multiple images throughout their posts
Only used images that were relevant to the topic
Frequently used images to back up their points

They were also getting far more shares on platforms – such as Pinterest – that we’d been neglecting up. So, we decided to adopt their approach and add more relevant images to our articles. And, well, the results speak for themselves.

Firstly, the amount of traffic we got through our images alone began to increase. Check out this snapshot of the traffic from Pinterest in the same time periods:

Look what happens when you search for Design School on Pinterest. It’s flooded – not with featured images, but with graphics from our picture list posts.

Secondly, the amount of social shares we got through Pinterest saw a big spike too. For example, this article about doodling has over 800 pins (and counting).

The lesson here is this:

Just having images in your post isn’t enough; they need to add value to what’s been written.

Step #7: Understanding your first viral hit

Here it is, the sixth and final step in our process. And, this is probably my favorite one. Why?

Because this is where you get to look back over all the hard work you’ve put in, and see what worked, what didn’t and most importantly, enjoy the fruits of it all.

So what did we learn from this whole process, and what does that mean for you and your blog? Well, I’m glad you asked.

The art of going viral

The first lesson I’d have to say I’ve learned is this:

Never be afraid to make a change.

Sometimes editors get generalized as self-professed “big shots.” And maybe some do think that.

But not the good ones.

There is always a better way of doing things. You can always know more about your audience, create better content and become a better blogger. Admitting you need to make a change is one of the first steps in that process.

If we had been scared to make the change, we’d probably still be getting a lot of session in the Design School. But we wouldn’t have helped anywhere near the amount of people we have to this date.

But, what did we learn as a blog?

Do your research: Without it, you’re going in blind. With it, your results can be extraordinary.
Be goal oriented: Having a vision is great. Having goals in place to achieve it? That’s what takes your blog to the next level.
Have a system: When you’ve devised your system, stick to it. If we’d kept changing our approach every two weeks, we’d never have found what worked and what didn’t.
Understand why you do everything: For example, if you’re just putting images in your posts because you’re supposed to, you won’t get far. If you understand what makes them powerful, you’ll start to see a difference.
If in doubt, run a test: You can never test too much. If you think you’re on to something, but you’re not sure, test it. And then test it again, just to be sure.
It’s always about the reader: Going viral is a great feeling. But it shouldn’t be your end goal. Focus on the reader and the shares will come.

To get the clearest picture, we turned to our competitors to see what content had been the most effective for them. Why?

Because it can highlight some really valuable information to you:

The topics your readers care about: So you always know you’re creating valuable, proven content.
The style of posts that works well: List posts, tutorials, how-to, checklists – you can begin to see what your target audience responds too.
What makes a post epic to your reader: Do they respond well to stories, images, click-to-tweets or calls to action?

When you’re armed with all of this, there’s no stopping you from creating the highest value content possible.

Inspired? Intrigued? I’d love to answer your questions in the comments. And don’t forget to download this free case study plus bonus resources.

059: How to Get People to Care About Your Work [Podcast]

The creative journey requires courage. When we launch our work into the world, it’s easy to feel discouraged when nobody notices. But that’s not the end of the story.

Sometimes the work of a creative person can feel like the tree that falls in the woods and nobody’s around to notice. Does it make a sound? Indeed, it does.

Getting people to care about your work in the middle of a consumption-driven culture is one of the greatest challenges you’ll face. The opportunities to fail are all around. But one thing we should fear more than failure is irrelevance.

You have to fight to earn people’s attention. It doesn’t just come.

This week on The Portfolio Life, Andy Traub and I talk about honoring the reader’s attention, the strategic value of generosity, and why you should measure quality over quantity. Listen in as we discuss the path from free to paid work, and how to use the creative process to reach a distracted audience.

Listen to the podcast

To listen to the show, click the player below (If you are reading this via email, please click here).

You can also listen via iTunes or on Stitcher.

Audacious generosity creates amazing results

Oftentimes, we think too small when creating. This happens all the time. A person builds a body of work in a vacuum, and then sits back, waiting for the audience to come. And when the world fails to notice their genius, they’re baffled.

It’s a broken process.

There’s nothing wrong with creating for the sake of creating. But if you want people to care about your work, you have to understand how to deliver value. Of course, you can’t force people to care. But you can earn their attention through radical generosity.

By consistently giving people content they care about, you create value. And if you do this enough, you establish trust.

To discover what resonates with an audience, you have to go beyond the vanity metrics of retweets and shares, and dig deeper into who resonates with your message. When someone takes the time to respond, comment, or email, you’ve succeeded in sparking a human connection. And that’s what it’s all about.

But if no one is listening, then something needs to change.

Show highlights

In this episode, Andy and I discuss:

How to get people to show up and care about your work
Thinking strategically capturing a reader’s attention
Awareness of what resonates with your audience
How to create value to convert customers
The struggle of creators being heard amidst the noise
Helping people by effectively sharing your passion
Measuring the right metrics to drive action
Which audience engagement style is most valuable
The choice between a stingy or generous approach
What it takes to sell 100,000 copies of a book
The art of capturing attention with words
Why it is dangerous to bend a reader around your writing
Time-tested copywriting principles

Quotes and takeaways

Your voice is what happens when you discover how your passion intersects with what your audience cares about.
Be consistently generous with the content you create.
Measure what matters to you. Don’t measure something that isn’t going to lead to some sort of outcome.
Demonstrating generosity the right way communicates value and creates a need.
We give our way into attention. Free becomes paid over time.
If you give enough, people will start giving back to you.

Resources

Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World by Bob Goff
CopyBlogger
Buffer

Do people care about your work? What can you do differently to earn their attention? Share in the comments

My Latest Experiment: Launching a Conference — Why I’m Scared & Doing It Anyway

Today, I’ve got an exciting announcement. On August 29-30, 2015, I’m going to host my first-ever conference, and I’d love to tell you it’s going to be amazing. But I have to be honest.

Photo Credit: The Open University (OU) via Compfight cc

I wish I could tell you this is going to be a success. I’d love to tell you it’ll sell out and that hundreds of people are going to show up. But the truth is I don’t know any of that. And there’s an important lesson in that.

Of course, I hope you’ll join us and that the thing won’t be a total flop, but honestly that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing this because the safe thing to do is not do it. And I believe the things worth doing in life are often the things that scare us the most.

So before I tell you all about the conference, I want to say something about doing scary things.

A life without risks is no life at all

Two years ago at a conference called World Domination Summit, I had a revelation. For three days, I ran into ordinary people who were living incredible. And they all had one thing in common: They were all taking risks.

Naturally, I began to wonder, “What’s something risky I’m doing?” I couldn’t think of anything. And that bothered me.

Now, mind you: I’m not a big risk-taker. I don’t go “all in” and bet everything on a single whim or idea. That’s often a recipe for disaster. But sometimes, I just play it too safe and miss out on the abundance that an adventurous life can bring.

Every once in awhile, you just have to do something that isn't guaranteed to succeed.Click To Tweet

So I had an idea. It was a simple idea, but one that felt risky, nonetheless. I wanted to start a conference. I had had this thought before, even been urged by my community to do it. But I just couldn’t pull the trigger. I was content to play it safe.

But when I finally gave myself permission to dream this dream, I got excited.

Lesson: Don’t wait for the perfect moment to pursue something you’ve been thinking about doing. Just get started.
Ideas without action are just dreams you eventually wake up from

That next year, I took some bigger risks. I went to Africa, taught a two-day course on email marketing for Creative Live, and started building a team for my business.

But still, I sat on the conference idea. I waited for the perfect moment, and it never came.

Eventually, I decided to just make a go of it, anyway.

Last November, I hosted a small workshop called the Tribe Intensive. It sold out a month before the event, and attendees loved it. I had a blast doing it and realized I enjoyed bringing people together to help them.

But what I really learned was I could do this. I could pull off an event, albeit a small one. That confidence led to a decision to follow through on this larger-scale conference idea.

So I met with my team to plan out the next six months of 2015, and we set aside some time to host a conference in Nashville.

Lesson: Big dreams don’t have to be all or nothing. Try to start small and learn as you go. Experience is the best teacher.
Everything worth doing is met with resistance

So we had a conference on the calendar. No budget. Very little experience. And no idea what this thing was going to be. But at least we had a date.

Then my book launch happened. And for four months, everything I did was centered around The Art of Work. I ate, slept, and breathed that thing. And in the haste of trying to launch the book right and deal with all kinds of unexpected issues with the launch (read more about that here), the conference got pushed back.

I stalled, wondering how I would possible pull something like this off. I worried I had missed my window of time, and we would just have to postpone until next year.

But I didn’t want to wait till next year.

So I called my friend Katie, who is a master at event planning and has helped me pull off several smaller-scaled events, like book launch parties and the workshop I mentioned. She asked how much time we had.

“Three months,” I told her. “Is that enough to plan an event?”

“It’s tight,” she said, “but doable.”

“Let’s do it,” I said.

And thus, the Tribe Conference was born.

Lesson: There’s never a ideal time to start something, but don’t be unrealistic with your dreams. Consult the experts, get the OK, and then move forward.
The only promise I’m going to make

Will it have this or that? The answer is maybe. It could have anything you want. Or nothing. Because we are still imagining what this thing could be. And instead of telling you we have it all figured out, I’m just going to be honest.

This is a work-in-progress, and you’re going to get to play a part of that progress.

I don’t want to convince you to come to the Tribe Conference. I want to invite you to participate in it. I want us to create something beautiful together.

We don’t need another social media extravaganza or another get-together where writers hear antiquated ways of getting published. You don’t need to see another hotel conference room or eat another stale bagel.

And the last thing you need is to listen to 20 forgettable keynotes you’ll barely remember the next day.

I don’t have anything wrong with events like that. We just don’t need another one of them. This will be different. And maybe because of that difference, it will fail. I don’t know.

But it will hopefully be unlike anything you have ever seen before. And if we do that, we will have succeeded. Because normal is boring. And doing something different is what gets me up in the morning.

That’s my only promise. And whatever I learn, whatever we do, I will be completely transparent about it. I’ll share it all here on my blog as it comes together. So if you want to see what it takes to pull off an event, stay tuned (be sure you’re signed up for email updates!).

Lesson: Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Do what excites you, and maybe others will come along, too.
Join us in August for the first Tribe Conference!

So if you’re intrigued, if you’re as curious as I am as to what this kind of conference could look like, and if you want to be part of something new and interesting, then I encourage you to come to the Tribe Conference.

For this week only, we’re offering a super early bird rate, which is the cheapest price it will ever be. We’re also offering a limited number of spots for this round of tickets, so they may go quickly.

If you’re still not sure what this is, here are some more details: The Tribe Conference is a two-day event (I’m calling it a marketing conference for non-marketers) packed full with inspiring speakers and practical content.

You’ll hear from guest speakers like Joshua Becker, Joe Bunting, Ally Vesterfelt, Whitney English, Tim Grahl, me, and maybe some more surprise guests!

The conference will be held at The Factory in Franklin, TN. We’ve arranged for a special discounted room rate at the Aloft Hotel. To make room reservations call 877-462-5638 and request the Tribe Conference block. Or click here to make your reservation online.

Register for the Tribe Conference Today.

What’s something risky you’ve attempted recently, and what did you learn? Share in the comments.

058: Launching a Blockbuster Blog on a Budget: Interview with Ruth Soukup [Podcast]

When a new artist we’ve never heard of sweeps the top honors at an awards show, it’s easy to wonder where they came from. We want to know the secret to their overnight rise to stardom.

What we don’t see on the highlight reel is all the late nights spent begging to sing in dive bars, or the countless tattered notebooks filled with scribbled lyrics. We don’t hear them singing heartfelt solos in the shower as a roommate bangs on the door telling them to pipe down.

The truth is there is no such thing as overnight success. Or if there is, it never happens overnight.

This week on The Portfolio Life, Ruth Soukup and I talk about her five-year journey to building a blockbuster blog with over one million monthly visitors, and the fastest path to “overnight” success.

Listen in as Ruth and I dive into how tension births inspiration, and how proximity to a pain point makes us relatable to our audience.

Listen to the podcast

To listen to the show, click the player below (If you are reading this via email, please click here).

You can also listen via iTunes or on Stitcher.

Invest in relationships before revenue

A hero in any great story is imperfect. Their flaws are what make them human. Even Superman had a vulnerability to kryptonite. The humanity of our heroes makes them relatable and helps us to believe in ourselves.

The best heroes share the journey, reaching out to pull others up to their level. They don’t have all the answers or diagnose problems from a distance. Rather than pointing out the problem on a map, they are climbing the mountain with us.

One of the things I found most interesting about Ruth’s journey is her intentional focus on relationships. The pivotal moments on her path to monumental success all involved relationships.

During our conversation, Ruth shared she often attends conferences, but will fail to participate in any of the sessions because she is too busy talking with a new acquaintance or old friend.

Ruth’s strategy for success incorporates the discipline of showing up daily to create and embracing opportunities to foster relationships. She is motivated by a teacher’s heart and genuinely wants to help people make their life better. Ruth is a hero who lifts others up on her shoulders to reach the next rung on the ladder.

It is no coincidence when givers experience success in their endeavors. When we learn a new lesson and turn around to mentor others the wind is at our back.

Consistently giving our best effort to create excellent content in the service of others is the only possible “shortcut” to overnight success.

Show highlights

In this episode, Ruth and I discuss:

What goes on behind the scenes of a blockbuster blog
The hard truth behind secret sauce shortcuts to success
How to pick a passion and get started blogging for big results
Tips to blog on different topics while maintaining a common thread
Why great content often originates from a place of pain
How conflict plays a role in the creative process
The key ingredient “experts” fail to include in their message
What bloggers need to build a business in the margin of life
Navigating the tension of the startup phase and beyond
A crucial asset when family and friends don’t “get” it
Which investment will ensure the most return on resources
Tips for mastering SEO out of the gate
The importance of boundaries to preserve sanity
A perspective for finding clarity admits the chaos

Quotes and takeaways

“It doesn’t matter what I do if I don’t treat people the right way.”
“A certain intimacy comes with proximity to a problem.”
It takes years to become an overnight success.
Sharing the journey resonates with readers.
Sometimes you have to believe in your dream before anyone else will.
Relationships have the highest ROI.
Getting small wins builds momentum and confidence for the long haul.
“As long as you create great content wherever you go, you’ll have a solid base to fall back on.”

Resources

Living Well Spending Less blog
Living Well Spending Less: 12 Secrets of the Good Life by Ruth Soukup
How to Blog for Profit: Without Selling Your Soul by Ruth Soukup
Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse
Elite Blogging Academy

Who are you investing in? How are you taking daily action to pursue your dream? Share in the comments

The 3 Most Powerful Words in the English Language

There are no three words in the English language that inspire greater courage than these: You’re not alone.

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk via Compfight cc

I was sitting in a therapy session not too long ago and ashamed to admit something to my counselor. Even though it was his job to not judge me or tell anybody about what goes on in that office, I didn’t want to tell him this.

When I finally opened up, sharing something of which I was deeply ashamed, he told me he had experience a similar struggle for years. Immediately, I felt a weight lift off me.

I wasn’t alone, after all.

Every time I hear someone else’s story of struggle, I realize something. I don’t have to do this on my own. We all get stuck sometimes, wondering if anyone truly understands. And at times like these, it’s easy to feel like it’s up to you.

But that’s not true. We all need community. “No man is an island,” John Donne wrote. Something magical happens when we take a look around and realize other people are right there with us.

Finding ourselves in community

Recently, I hosted a lunch in which about a dozen people of all ages sat around a table and shared one thing they were working on and one big struggle they had. Do you know what we all learned from that table?

Everybody struggles.

Nobody sat at that table and said, “You know, I’ve got it all figured it out. I just don’t struggle.” No one.

There’s something beautiful about realizing we aren’t the only ones who have kids that don’t listen or books that don’t sell or creative ideas that stay stuck in our heads. There’s something satisfying about seeing other people struggle, too.

For me, it’s just nice to know that I’m not alone.

One the things that’s been fun recently is to see people read The Art of Work and share how the words have made them feel:

This book has been such a benefit for me. This author has been through the trenches to bring together a book that is alive with insight that can only come from experience. The sentences were infused with personal knowledge wrought on the battlefield of trials and tribulation. I am so glad that I was able to come across this. The book’s emphasis on following your passion and not giving up is more than your usual self-help mantras. Thank you Jeff for your expertise and you are an inspiration to continue to follow my passion of writing.

—CJ

I’ve been in a ten foot hole for the past year after losing a good paying job. Not matter how hard to try, I can’t seem to get out of this hole. I have been trying to get a freelance writing and editing business going since then. When this book was released, I knew it was something I needed to read. It kept calling to me. I finished reading it a couple of days ago and haven’t stopped thinking about what I’ve read… These stories have motivated me and made me focus on what my calling is. In fact, I have so many ideas swirling around in my head that I don’t even know where to start. If you aren’t sure what you were called to do in life, this book is strongly recommended!

—Michele

If you are wondering what you’re called to do/to be and what your life legacy is supposed to be, I highly recommend Jeff’s book. If you think you’ve already arrived at your calling, you may want to consider reading The Art of Work to find out if there’s something new to discover (like I did). This book would also be great for a group discussion. I would even recommend employers buy copies for their employees. If they love their job, it may renew their passion. If they hate their job, it may encourage them to move on to something new, opening a space in your office for someone who will love their job. Pastors could use the book to encourage their ministry teams to find their purpose and calling. I wish I’d had this book when I was a high school senior. I could have saved myself a bunch of time and money had I known what these pages hold. Honestly, I would recommend this book to everyone.

—Alycia

(And congrats to “BTripp” on winning the $100 Amazon gift card recently for his review of my book. He raised some great critical thoughts and offered some helpful feedback.)

It’s a strange thing to write a book. To pour your heart out on the page (well, really it was a screen) and wait a year for people to read those words and tell you if it resonated. It’s a tremendous act of faith. And yet, when it happens — when a connection is made — it makes me realize why I do this.

I write books to not feel alone and to hopefully help others feel the same.

Feeling like you’re all alone?

If you’re feeling alone and looking to be encouraged in your journey, you should pick up a copy of The Art of Work and listen in to my new podcast, which is chock full of insights on the process of finding your calling.

For your convenience, here is a link to every episode so you can binge listen, if you want:

01 Welcome
02 Listening To Your Life
03 Accidental Apprenticeships
04 Painful Practice
05 Building Bridges
06 Pivot Points
07 The Portfolio Life
08 Your Magnum Opus
09 Your Calling is Never Done
10 When You’ve Called It Finished

Check out the new podcast here.

When was a time when you felt all alone but then realized you weren’t? Share in the comments (links welcome!).

The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly of Launching a Best-selling Book

Recently, I shared with you the lessons I learned from launching my first best-selling book, The Art of Work. Now, I want to tell you how I did it. (If you don’t want to read all 3500 words of this post, just skip to the summary.)

Photo Credit: KJGarbutt via Compfight cc

A quick word of warning: Every book, and every launch, is different. In this post, I did my best to pull the principles out of the details, but don’t try to do exactly what I did — it won’t work.

Instead, learn from my mistakes and do something better. Book publishing is an ever-changing industry, so what worked yesterday won’t necessarily work tomorrow.

Now without further ado, here’s how my team and I launched a best-selling book. My book launch co-conspirator, Tom Morkes, helped me compile this post so he deserves the credit for tracking and organizing all this information.

The plan

The first thing you want to do is create a strategy. Before you bring your book to market, you need clarity on a few key elements that will play a significant role in your launch:

1. Goal: What do I want to accomplish?

For The Art of Work, I wanted to sell 10,000 trade paperbacks before launch (these are called preorders). The stretch goal was to hit a best sellers list. And though I would have liked to set a less concrete goal like “change people’s lives,” there would have been no way to measure that.

Why did I choose the number 10,000? Two reasons:

With the size of my audience, 10,000 people seemed doable (though challenging).
10,000 people is a lot of people. It’s enough, in my opinion, to make some waves in the world (which was my bigger why behind what I was doing — I wanted to change the way people think about their vocations).

When setting goals, you want to make them precise, measurable, and time sensitive.

2. Timeline: How much time do I have?

In December, I met with my publisher, Thomas Nelson, and decided on a strategy we believed would get us to 10,000 pre-orders by the end of March.

To develop a proper book marketing timeline, you need to:

Back plan from the launch date.
Set measurable objectives along the way. In this case, we identified how many total pre-orders per week we would need on average, when we would launch the book site, and when we would start emailing my list to initiate the campaign.
Fill in the timeline with key marketing and promotional objectives (e.g. send an email to my list, guest post on blog X on topic Y, reach out to influencer Z, etc.).

The timeline is a living document that will change and evolve as you move through the launch sequence and something that ought to be influenced by your entire team — or at least key people in charge of the marketing. Here’s a snapshot of what ours looked like:

3. Resources: What will it take to accomplish this?

Resources include whatever assets or means you can put behind your book launch. These should include:

Your blog
Your email list
Your social media channels
Your personal network (which can leverage into an active team)

This is just a snapshot of the resources that will directly influence the success or failure of your book launch. But the point is to use whatever you have and not wish for something unrealistic.

I would have loved to have been on Oprah or Good Morning America, but that wasn’t likely. So I used what I had: my blog, my email list, and my connections. You need to do the same: use whatever resources are available to you.

Building the team

After you create your plan, you’re going to want to compile your team, which will come from your list of friends, even family, and anyone who follows your work. Sometimes, these people will come out of the woodwork and surprise you.

For The Art of Work, Daniel Decker led the launch team via a private Facebook Group. We invited people via Twitter and Facebook to apply through an online form and accepted the first 250 applications.

The private group gave me the ability to interact directly with the people who would be the front line in our marketing and promotional activities — from writing reviews, to spreading the word.

If you’re going to do this, I recommend having someone (even a volunteer) help you manage the group. Because you will get busy and overwhelmed, and you don’t want to neglect these people. Daniel was a pro at this.

The beauty of a launch team is you don’t have to be pushy or promotional — these are people who want to help. Your job is to give them simple, actionable steps to do that.

Here are some ways to leverage a launch team:

Ask them to leave a review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads when the book launches (assuming you’ve given them free access to the book early — which you should).
Encourage each member to write a review on their own blog. In exchange, highlight these people on your blog when the book launches! See below for how we did that.
Coordinate a Thunderclap.it campaign (a great way to get a lot of eyeballs on your book during launch day as long as the campaign succeeds — so make sure you set a low enough goal that you can achieve it).
Share important blog posts, guest posts, or listing site mentions and ask members to support by checking it out and sharing if it resonates. I told our team that I’d retweet as many of them as possible when they talked about the book.

There are dozens of other effective ways to turn a launch team into a remarkable marketing effort. Just make sure to make it valuable for your team.

For The Art of Work, this meant giving people the opportunity to interact with me on a personal level. We used this opportunity to answer questions, do live calls, and much more. Keep it fun, light, and engaging and your launch will do wonders for you.

Finding the right channels

How will you reach your target readership and early adopters?

This is the point where most launches fail. Even if you have the best book in the world it won’t matter if you can’t cost effectively reach your target audience.

Many authors make the mistake of depending on bookstores or their publishers to make their sales for them. And sure, these sources might generate some sales, but I promise you this: nobody will care more about your book’s success than you. So the secret weapon to a great book launch is you.

The secret weapon to a great book launch is you.Click To Tweet

Sales aren’t automatic. It takes finding and connecting with likeminded readers to move the needle. To do this, you need to identify effective marketing channels.

A marketing channel is any medium or platform you can use to promote and sell your book.

Here are the channels we used:

Blogs and podcasts. We reached out to niche blogs and podcasts to see if they wanted to interview me. The power in niche blogs and podcasts isn’t sales numbers, but the trust that gets built when an author and his book seem to be “everywhere.” This ties directly into what’s called the mere-exposure effect: the more we see something, the more we like it. By agreeing to hundreds of interviews, I was able to help The Art of Work reach a large audience of potential readers.
Listing sites. A listing site is a place where likeminded people come and share cool things (usually links to products, images, or ideas). Examples include: Reddit.com, Bootstrapper.io, and Produchunt.com, among others. Some of these listing sites can result in tens of thousands of eyeballs on your book if you position it right.
Reddit AMA. Reddit.com AMA’s (ask me anything) are increasingly popular events where interesting people agree to answer questions during a specified time period. The cool part about an AMA is that you can not only engage with the audience you’ve already built, but compelling AMAs drive lots of eyeballs to your event. I did one here and will admit that I probably don’t “get” Reddit. But at least I tried.

057: Time Management Secrets of Ultra Performers: Interview with Rory Vaden [Podcast]

Everyone wishes for more time. More time to create, more time to sleep, more time with loved ones. We constantly search for more time and fail. What if, instead of adding more time, you could multiply the time you already have?

As we pursue a passion we may assume procrastination won’t be a problem. Unfortunately, working on a dream requires tremendous effort, and we fall victim to postponing the work we know we should be doing.

We rob time from ourselves and wonder why we can’t get everything done.

This week on The Portfolio Life, Rory Vaden and I talk about his latest book, Procrastinate on Purpose, and how changing our perspective of time management results in multiplying our time to do work that matters.

Listen in as we discuss three dimensional thinking, the significance calculation, and how a “focus funnel” exponentially impacts our available time.

Listen to the podcast

To listen to the show, click the player below (If you are reading this via email, please click here).

You can also listen via iTunes or on Stitcher.

Thinking with longevity leads to legacy

Procrastination and productivity are strange bedfellows. Typically we think of procrastination as the antithesis of productivity. During our conversation, Rory shed fresh light on our misconception of time management and shared how to procrastinate on purpose.

Everyone has the same 24 hours each day. It’s impossible to create more time within those 24 hours. From this viewpoint, our natural tendency is to cram as much work as possible into 24 hours so we can fall asleep feeling productive. We are slaves to the tyranny of the urgent (how soon something matters) and the important (how much something matters).

According to Rory, therein lies a secret of ultra performers. Instead of thinking of productivity within the limitations of a single day, ultra performers expand their construct to include value over time. They calculate the longevity, or significance, of a task to determine when and how it should be done.

By pivoting our thinking to consider how long something matters, we can effectively identify how our activities today create more time tomorrow.

Show highlights

In this episode, Rory Vaden and I discuss:

Why three types of procrastination are destructive
How ultra performers properly procrastinate to multiply time
What myths people believe about time management
Determining your ROTI (return on time invested) to guide decision-making
Which commonly accepted truths are ignored by ultra performers
Where to change your perspective and unlock more time
Three dimensions of the significance calculation
How to escape the tyranny of urgency
What it takes to move beyond success and discover significance
Why it is difficult to delegate
Using time to buy more time

Quotes

”You multiply time by giving yourself the emotional permission to spend time on things today that give you more time tomorrow.”
“Inaction that results from indulgence is Procrastination. Inaction that results from intention is Patience.”
“There is no such thing as time management. There is only self-management.”
“80% done by anyone else is better than 100% done by me.”
“Success is never owned, it’s only rented. The rent is due every day.”

Resources

First Things First by Stephen Covey
Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time by Rory Vaden
Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success by Rory Vaden

Special announcement: Aug 28-30 — save the date. Something big is coming. That’s all I can say for now, but you’ll want to book your ticket to Nashville. More to come soon!

Do you think time management is a myth? What can you do to procrastinate on purpose? Share in the comments

Reward the Givers, Not the Haters

A new lesson I’m learning in interacting with people is this: Reward the givers, not the haters.

Photo Credit: theloushe via Compfight cc

The people pleaser in me wants to chase down every angry customer, every dissatisfied reader, every failed friendship, and try to make it right. But that’s not the best use of my time.

It also send a terrible message to the world. It says, “If you hate me, I will love you.” And the converse (“If you love me, I’ll ignore you”), by implication, is also true.

That just seems wrong, doesn’t it?

How I learned this recently

I was just cruising my reviews on Amazon the other day (thanks to the hundreds of you who have left an honest review of The Art of Work — it’s truly humbling), and I came across this one:

So I reached out to Melinda on Twitter and thanked her. And honestly, that’s a discipline for me. It doesn’t come naturally, but I want it to. I spend most of my time reaching out to people who want to argue, fight, or call me names. And this is not healthy.

Honestly, when I am skimming my reviews, I’m looking for people who didn’t “get” the book and then trying to convince them that I’m a good guy.

I reply to these reviews, sometimes seek out these critics on Twitter just to let them know that I’m someone worth loving. It’s ridiculous when I write those words and read them, but that’s how I feel when I’m doing this. It’s not healthy.

Not too long ago, I replied to a one-star review of my book and offered a refund to that person (as is my practice), and he sent me an email saying something that surprised me:

I had no idea authors read their reviews… If I knew you were listening, I would have been nicer.

Wow. I appreciate the honesty, but isn’t that indictment of society today? I would have been nicer to you, if I knew you’d hear what I was saying. This is not the kind of world that I want to be a part of.

So what’s the solution? Reward the givers, ignore the haters. Don’t feed the trolls. You’ve heard this stuff before. So have I. So why do we ignore it? Because it’s easier to argue than it is to appreciate.

“It’s easier to argue than it is to appreciate.”Click To Tweet

Give your best stuff, including your attention, to the people who appreciate it. And just say “thanks” to those who are unkind. Or better yet: ignore them and keep doing work worth criticizing.

When you stop feeding the trolls

When you reward the givers you:

reinforce positive feedback from your tribe
foster healthier relationships with people
focus on the people who appreciate your work (which makes your next effort even better)

I want to spend more time with the Melindas of the world — the people who get what I’m trying to do and appreciate it.

That’s not to say I want to insulate myself completely from criticism. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I do want to have healthier relationships, greater self-confidence, and more feedback from the people I am trying to reach (which is not everyone).

So that’s your assignment: reward the givers in your life and try to ignore the haters. Do it today and let me know how it goes.

And to put my money where my mouth is, I’m giving away a $100 Amazon gift card to one random person who reviews my book this week. Here’s how it works:

Pick up a copy of the book (there’s a list on the book site).
Leave a review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, or your blog (if you do it on more than one site, that’s even better!).
Drop a comment on this post by 11:59 PM PT Monday May 25, sharing where you did this (including the link if you can).
Next week, I’ll announce the winner.

How could you be rewarding the givers in your life? Share that (and a link to your review if you have one) in the comments.

056: Courage and the Creative Pursuit

It’s present every time you sit down to create. No matter how often you face it, it never gets easier. And as you make daily decisions to do your work, this enemy is constantly trying to stop you.

Fear. We all have it. It manifests in a variety of forms: fear of success, fear of failure, fear of insignificance. But we all deal with it at some point. We who dare to create are not strangers to this thing called fear.

Here’s the thing, though: the way you and I have been conditioned to face this adversary is wrong. Motivational speakers and inspirational memes would have us believe that boxing fear into submission is the path to bravery. It’s not. 1In my experience, true courage is not so much about beating fear as it is about outrunning it — doing your work in spite of feeling afraid.

In this week’s episode of The Portfolio Life, Andy Traub and I talk about the defiant nature of creative pursuits, the power of habit, and the quiet courage you need to do your best work. Listen in as we discuss why fear never really goes away but how you can still escape its grasp.

Listen to the podcast

To listen to the show, click the player below (If you are reading this via email, please click here).

You can also listen via iTunes or on Stitcher.

Fighting fear is a losing battle

Any time someone tweets or posts an Instagram graphic about beating fear, I cringe a little. When we think of it as a conquerable enemy, we miss the mark.

Fear is more akin to a shadow lurking at our heels. You can’t fight it, no matter how hard you try. And if you stand still, it will catch you. So what do you do? You outrun it.

Courage, especially for the creative person, is found in daily decisions to pursue momentum. To keep moving. To do the thing only you can do, regardless of the fear you feel. You must make things.

You can only control what is in your control, and sometimes that means doing your work afraid. Which is a whole lot better than not doing it at all.

Show highlights

In this episode, Andy and I talk about:

The true nature of creative courage
Why punching fear in the face is a bad idea
What it takes to outrun fear
Defiance as a key attribute of the creative pursuit
How the internet is the best and worst thing for a creative
What I consider quitting about twice a week
The secret to connecting with your audience
How private courage leads to public impact
What bravery looks like
Why people react when we challenge the norm
Practical steps writers can take to be courageous
Ernest Hemingway’s “secret” vanity published titles
How book publishing is not dead and what innovations to watch for

Quotes and Takeaways

“Courage is doing the thing only you can do.”
“Our responsibility as creators is to sit down and create again and again.”
“The only things that matter are the things that only we can measure.”
“…the only way to find your voice is to use it.” —Austin Kleon
Quantity X Time = Quality
“The only decision you control is the decision to make something.”
“You don’t find your voice and then write. You write to find your voice.”

Resources

Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Note: Be sure to check out my brand-new podcast, The Art of Work Conversations, in which Andy and I do a limited series of episodes exploring the seven stages of discovering meaningful work. I think you’ll dig it.

What does courage look like in your life? Share in the comments.

Advice for Graduates: 3 Tips You Won’t Hear in Any Commencement Speech

It’s that time of year again. The birds are chirping. The flowers are in bloom. And graduates everywhere are wondering what the heck they’re doing with their lives.

Listen here, graduates. Plenty of people will tell you to enjoy this time and not worry about what’s to come. That’s bad advice. This season of life ahead of you is important. Don’t waste it. At the same time, don’t drive yourself crazy with the fear of missing out or the stress of making the wrong choice. You will miss out and you will mess up. This season is all a delicate balancing act.

The difference between squandering this time and making the most of it is understanding what to do with what’s ahead of you. So here’s some advice I’ve pulled together, much of it from my recent book, The Art of Work (which a reader recently pointed out makes for a great graduation gift).

Don’t worry about what to do

When my friend and former roommate Andrew Chipman was getting ready to graduate college, I asked if he was excited about completing his education.

“No,” he said. “My education will never end.”

He told me the one thing he was looking forward to was deciding what he would learn. He was eager to get back to reading what he wanted to read, not what he was told. His education hadn’t ended; it just changed shape.

Andrew was right. You never really leave the classroom. There’s always a new lesson life has to teach you, if you’re willing to listen. So don’t worry too much about what to do. Worry, instead, about who you are becoming.

“Don’t worry about what to do. Worry about who you are.”Click To Tweet

Whether or not you’re continuing your education, never stop learning. Become a student of the world around you. Travel to new places. Meet interesting people. Read as many books as possible. Pray and meditate, reflecting on who you are and are becoming. These practices offer your soul the quiet it needs in a world where such practices are becoming obsolete.

As Parker Palmer once wrote,

Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.

Spend some time learning who you are and what you’re supposed to do will become more clear.

Stop trying to find the perfect job

One of the great illusions in our world today is the idea that there’s some perfect job out there, waiting for you. You can’t find the perfect job, but you can create it.

“You can’t find the perfect job, but you can create it.”Click To Tweet

The world of work is changing. Companies are getting smaller, not larger. Organizations are shrinking, and employers are outsourcing more and more, hiring contractors instead of employees as they look for ways to decrease their risk. And this is actually a wonderful opportunity for those entering the workforce.

When I interviewed hundreds of people who had found their calling – people ages 18 to 80 – one recurring theme was almost every person was a business owner. From the college-aged computer programmer, to the couple in Burundi starting a coffee company, to the Singaporean doula – each person understood their life’s work would not simply be handed to them. They had to create it.

The job market isn’t great, and it probably won’t be getting any better in the foreseeable future. If the studies are true, by the year 2020, we will see over half the workforce functioning as freelancers, with no steady job but a portfolio of gigs that provide a living.

This may not sound like good news to everyone, especially those who are less entrepreneurial. But it is. If you embrace this reality, you won’t have to settle for a position that doesn’t fulfill your potential. You can create the perfect job for yourself.

Don’t chase your dream (yet)

I often hear older people tell young people that the best thing they could do is chase their dreams. Hogwash. Blindly pursuing your passion is the fastest way to the unemployment line.

The world is full of dreamers who hate their lives and blame their bosses. Passion won’t save you from failure and it won’t protect you from economic hardship. Deferring your dream, though, as the proverb says, “makes the heart go sick.” So what do you do?

“Serve someone else’s dream first,” my former boss Seth used to . In other words, become an apprentice. Stop wasting your time in search of the perfect mentor and instead help someone else’s dream come true. I did this for seven years, and it taught me more than a master’s degree.

“Don’t chase your dream yet. Serve someone else’s first.”Click To Tweet

The world doesn’t owe you anything, least of all the privilege to do work you love. And chances are, there are already people out there doing it. So find them, help them, and learn from them. Don’t chase your dream; serve someone else’s.

Summary

In summary (or in case you skimmed all of the above):

Don’t worry about what to do. Worry about who you are becoming. Focus on continued growth and learning, and what you’re meant to do will become clear over time.
Stop looking for the perfect job and start creating it. The best way to do what you love is to build the perfect job for yourself. Start a small business, if even as a hobby, so you’re never completely on someone else to earn a living.
Instead of chasing your dream, serve someone else’s dream first. This will save you years of pain and accelerate your growth in ways you can’t imagine. And it will humble you.

So that’s my advice. Do with it what you will, but please do something. If you need more help, are some next steps:

Read The Art of Work . You can get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or at your local bookstore.
Join the community (which you get access to when you sign up for the bonuses on the book site).
Listen my new podcast to explore each of these topics in greater depth. While you’re tuning in, be sure to check out my interview with Ryan Holiday about his apprenticeship with a famous author.

Bonus resource: Watch this video from my friend Yahya. He highlights some of the same points I do.

And if this post resonated with you, please share it with someone you know.

What’s the best graduation advice you’ve either given or received? Share in the comments.