There Are No Mistakes in Marketing — Only Data
A reader emailed me:
“By the way, per your blog, if sending traffic to the wrong page on your site is The Worst Marketing Mistake You Ever Made, you’re doing pretty well.”
Maybe I should have qualified this statement a little bit — maybe I could have said “since launching my current blogs Shift Your Spirits and Spiritual Blogging.” These are not the first blogs I’ve developed, they represent the first of my personal blogs — the blogs where I am my own client.
Surely I’ve learned a lot by all the “mistakes” I’ve made — I’ve been fortunate to apply what I’ve learned the hard way working on other people’s campaigns — but I would not call them “regrets,” as there are no actions I’ve taken that I could “remove” without also erasing the lessons they taught me.
As I consider questions about blogging like:
- What would I do differently if I could do it over?
- What do I wish I’d known about blogging five years ago that I know now?
I can come up with a long list of Coulda - Woulda - Shoulda — and really, that’s where the vast majority of articles on this blog and the content in my tutorials originates. For the sake of a positive attitude — to inspire, to motivate, to advise, to teach — I generally skip straight to what I would’ve done in the first place.
I’m full of quotes whose origins I can’t recall, but some wise marketer out there once told me that:
For creative entrepreneurs there are no mistakes — no real failures — in marketing; everything that doesn’t work can be chalked up to research and valuable data.
Knowing what not to do is incredibly helpful. Learning the hard way is a wonderful gift of experience.
What have I learned the hard way about blogging?
If I could start a blog today, knowing what I’ve learned, I would:
- Start blogging sooner — the only way you can really acquire what you need to know
- Define my schedule with downtime and turn off the computer once per day and not even think about turning it on again until the next morning
- Launch a big mess if that’s all I could manage; improve it later; perfect it… probably never — perfection is not required
- Find the narrowest niche possible and avoid creating more of what’s already out there
- Take making money out of the equation and replace the word “money” with the word “value” in all my goals
- Anticipate the long-term journey toward my career as a professional blogger, an author, as an individual, and prioritize establishing my personal brand identity and domain over the limits of business brands or individual projects
- Spend less time trying to find the perfect domain name, the perfect blog title, and start with the Mission Statement, the tagline, the description
- Concentrate on defining my target reader’s profile before writing my profile or about pages
- Compare my idea of success to no one
- Plan for every possible achievement to take exactly twice as long as I project
- Only blog about topics that I could never even imagine growing tired of
- Write every single post as if it were a personal email to one of my closest friends
- Manifest people, not things
- Manifest the What and not the How
Hosting not Posting
I could go on, but, last and not least, I’d spend more time hosting conversations instead of posting lectures; which brings me to the most important part of this article:
What would YOU do differently if you launched a new blog knowing what you’ve learned the hard way? Please share some of your Coulda Woulda Shoulda in the comments below.
Want to Capture More Subscribers? Here’s what works for me.
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
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11 Responses to “There Are No Mistakes in Marketing — Only Data”
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This last sentence is the one that caught my attention:
“I’d spend more time hosting conversations instead of posting lectures”
That sums up what blogging is all about really.. and it’s something I need to learn to do better on my blog.
What would I do differently in launching a new blog? Pretty much everything you’ve listed there. I’d also get very clear on WHY I am blogging.
Haha.. Slade, I’ve wished I’ve found Spiritual Blogging earlier! I’m a strong advocate of not looking back into my past actions as regrettable stuff. They’re valuable lessons to me as they’ve mould the site to be what it is today.
But I did learn a lot from your site to justify my earlier comment! You’ve allowed to gain a lot of perspectives about my blogging. Not just about ditching an aweber newsletter for the feedburner email delivery but more importantly about how to treat each and every reader with due respect, care and sincerity.
That’s something I’m still learning. But definitely something I wouldn’t have found out if not for your advice.
K-L,
Don’t beat yourself up about “lecturing” — there’s a time and place for it, but the forgiving thing about blogging is that it doesn’t require you to live on a high horse and be perfect… Conversations and two-way dialogs allow you to learn from your readers. Less pressure to fast-forward to the finish line, but find a comfort zone and companions along the way.
I’m also the biggest conversation hog on the planet, sometimes, and I struggle with one thing above all others.
I can sum up my greatest on-going challenge with one word:
Succinct
Forgot to list that valuable “before-and-after” lesson — to be succinct; but again, my ability to see the value of being more succinct comes out of writing regularly, and working on different formats, in different mediums.
Learning along with you…
: )
Ellesse,
Thank you! I’m thrilled that you’ve been prompted to reflect, discover insights, and apply useful improvements as a result of what we’ve discussed here.
I would have planned less before starting. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the perfect concept for my blog…
But once I got going, it all collapsed on me. What I truly love to do started to shine through so strong that I couldn’t even think of anything else. I faced severe writer’s block, because I kept holding on to the concept I made up in my mind.
Once I let go of that, it all started rolling very smoothly! It turns out I’m an artist after all, not a philosopher, and saying it out loud is extremely liberating!
Great post, Slade - the “hosting conversations, not lectures” point really came home to me, because that is definitely NOT happening on my blog right now, but I’m going to work on it asap!
If I might add one big “Shoulda” on my part - joining in the wonderful community of bloggers out there. I’ve been writing for two years, but “blogging” for a mere couple of months, in my book, because it’s about bringing readers into a community, not just my neck of the woods. I totally didn’t “get” blogging for the longest time, and still consider myself a “baby blogger,” so I love this particular blog of yours!
Thanks for the continuing insights!
Blessings,
Andrea
Fear was my biggest obstacle. I am learning more each day that courage really is being afraid and doing it anyway. One step at a time. For many years fear was my constant companion and I didn’t even recognise it as such. Now I find myself seeing fear for what it is and pushing forward instead of standing still. Lately, I keep running into the saying, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” That is my present motto. What would I change? Nothing. Everything is perfect as it is. One of my biggest rewards for overcoming my fears is being a part of this wonderful community of like-minded, spiritual beings.
Vitor,
“Planning less before starting” has come up a lot in recent emails with clients and people who are using PageCoach Problogging Tutorial.
I would say that has to be the absolute #1 thing about blogging that will kill it before it ever starts. One of the reasons why I say my best advice to new bloggers is “Start Yesterday!” is because of exactly what you describe.
You really can’t discover the direction of your blog without doing it.
Andrea,
You know, as I described in the recent comments on Shift Your Spirits it really is a simple and obvious copywriting “trick” — Ask!
As Patricia and I alluded to, there was a time about a year ago when my subscriber list was growing like crazy, I had a lot of readers — yet very few people would leave a reply! And when they did respond, the overwhelming majority did so by email. It left me scratching my head… until I realized I wasn’t encouraging or inviting that level of participation.
I started experimenting with signing off a post with a leading, direct question.
Here are a few tips that will super-power that invitation to comment:
Your regular readers/subscribers who are most likely to reply may not be reading your post on your site…
– Link to Comments — Notice that I also create text links in those prompts to the reply form itself — sometimes twice. This is so that subscribers who are reading by email or feed reader can be taken to the comments/reply form with one click.
– Comment Count/Add-a-Comment — if you’re using Feedburner, make sure you activate this option at the end of your feeds.
Trust me, just being aware that you want to improve the level of conversation is more than half the game.
Patricia,
Fear now seems glaringly, obviously absent from my list here.
See, I’ve already forgotten what it felt like — when the biggest thing holding me back from writing publicly about my experiences was fear that I would be perceived as a nut case.
Another Catch-22 scenario, much like over-preparing before starting — the fear of it can only be transformed by embracing it and moving into it — through it — and coming out the other side.
great points… I’ve found that by using Google.com/Alerts and commenting on other posts, I’m able to be more insightful on my blog.
I tend to post 2 - 3 times on my blog every week… do just as much, if not more, in my relevant blogosphere.
thanks for the tips
~ Vikram
PersonalBrandMarketing.com