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Recently, I wiped out a ton of broken links from comments and backlinks to my site. It was filled with all sorts of really cool and interestingly named URL’s gone dead and it read like a graveyard of broken dreams and hopes. Beautifully named websites that had met their demise over a short period of time. I know some of these folks thought getting a really cool hot search name would do most of the WORK for them. It didnt happen. You have to WORK YOUR BRAND.
Song Titles Dont Sell Music
The music sells the songs. I know people who have a hundred or more of the coolest named URLs and do almost nothing with them. Its not the Title of your URL, its about the music of your content. Focus on one site and make it great. WORK YOUR BRAND.
Do You Have Fresh Eggs?
There is an old business adage, if you’re not growing your business its dying. Attrition can kill. Like any organism, if your online presence isnt moving and showing signs of life, its likely dead to your readers. The only place people go to see dead things is a cemetery, not to your inactive stale blog. Someone asked me why no one was going to their blog and website the other day. I said how fresh is your content? They blogged twice a year. People want fresh and new: fresh eggs, fresh bread, fresh blog posts and new changes. Would you buy expired eggs at the store? Nope. Your readers dont want to see the same stale expired content over and over either.
Work Your Brand
You have to build it first before they will come. No player walks onto the Superbowl for their first football game. It takes years of commitment and dedication where a majority of time you build your fan base and wonder if anyone is listening. WORK YOUR BRAND! You have to start heavily building your content lonely and quiet as it may be at first. You have to be posting, sharing and spreading your ideas and experience. You have to be constantly feeding your old readers and attracting new ones by sharing your latest ideas and techniques. WORK YOUR BRAND!
People write me and tell me they want to be like me soon and ask how to do it. Well following my path, spend 2 years pumping out content with very few people listening or watching and slowly build your audience. I shared content I’d have spent a million dollars not to have had to learn the hard way in my Startups and maybe 30 people saw it. Its VERY lonely, it wont happen overnight and its NOT EASY. You have to WORK your Brand.
Curator of what?
I hear many people talk about curation of content. How about being a curator of NEW readers and followers by being fresh and interesting in sharing your professional views? I see so many people focus on content and not focus on the curation of expanding new followers and readers. You can write great content daily and have it be the smartest stuff ever written but unless you are also building your base of followers and potential listeners no one will hear you. A friend of mine did over 200 podcasts without ever knowing if anyone was listening or working to promote it. After we pulled his Analytics, maybe 3-10 people where listening. He’d never focused time on getting new listeners or promoting them. Whats the point? Its like a tree not making a sound in the forest if theres no one to hear it. Part of your time must be to focus on DISTRIBUTION. Just like a newspaper, you can write great stuff but every morning you have to distribute and deliver it. You have to have a “sales department” that works to expand your distribution. Attrition: as you gain readers you also lose readers, grow or die.
Are you REALLY an expert?
There is a reason everything is delivered fresh daily. Yesterdays news is old news, especially in our nanosecond Twitter news delivery world. People tune into you to hear YOUR take, YOUR opinion, sample YOUR expertise on the latest subjects. They tune in to hear it from you, fresh and now. If you are really an expert in your field you should be sharing your opinions as much as you can on your blog or social media.
Set Goals For Content and Building An Audience
Every year my New Years resolution is to blog daily. I check it by searching dates in my blog to measure how I’m doing through the year. The first 2 years I only averaged 200 posts a year but I got close for trying. 2012’s New Years resolution was to do 2-3 a day. Right now on October 8th, we’re at 438 as of this date. Set goals for your blog or website, work it like a business. Those without a plan, automatically have planned to fail.
In the end: WORK YOUR BRAND. Give it life and vigor, making it something people want to come and read. Bake it fresh! Give it that fresh bread smell! Focus part of your time on distribution and attracting new subscribers. Track your viewership and focus in on making it grow. In one of the next posts I’ll do, I’ll show you how I handle some of my distribution after I put up a post. Stay tuned and subscribe to our blog here. WORK YOUR BRAND.
Chris, you know I’m a big fan, but I have to disagree with you. As a Grammy-nominated songwriter, I think I have some credibility when I say that what sells a song is the marriage between the lyric and the music and the title or hook. Not for dance music, but for great songs, it absolutely matters.
Songs like “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” “You Got A Friend” “Candle in the Wind” “I Will Always Love You” I could go on and on. WIthout the sentiment expressed in the title they wouldn’t be the classics that they are.
And the same is true for great brands. If you want a GREAT brand, you have to put time and thought into what your core message is, and how to best express it. And yes, then you have to work it! But a pig with lipstick is still a pig. You’ve got to have something great to make it fly.
I agree!
I agree!