Have you ever wondered which direction to take your content marketing? After finishing up my most recent series of blog posts, I had to make a decision on which direction to take my next series. In addition, it was time to perform an analysis of my overall strategy during the past year. I needed a method of digging up answers to the following questions: Which posts of mine have done well in the...
Last week I wrote a review of Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath. One of the qualities of the book that impressed me most was the large number of stories used to illustrate its main points. The book would have been much less inspiring without them. I decided after reading that book, that as I publish my own books, I will be sure to make them rife with stories.
Job titles, income, social following, successful businesses, free time, attitude about life, physical fitness, excellence at a hobby…These are things that I see other people excelling at over myself daily, and if I’m not careful, comparing myself to them on one of these metrics can potentially strip me of contentment with who I am, and what I am good at.
I feel that the quest to be productive will last my whole lifetime. Every time I think that I have it figured out and put a system in place, the smallest change usually sends the system crumbling. However, I’ve recently settled on a few tools that are starting to stand the test of time, and I thought I’d take a moment to share them with you.
Most of us know how to tackle large tasks: You make a plan, set aside time, and execute. However, how do you make sure those little, pesky to-dos get done? Put new batteries in the camera. Call the bank about that letter. Pick up some milk while you’re out. Small to-do tasks are easily forgotten because they just aren’t important enough to stay at the top of our minds.
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending the BaconBiz conference in Philadelphia. The conference overall was a mind grenade of great advice and inspiration. One of the key concepts that kept coming up was the idea of focusing on benefits when writing about your product, and not just the features. For example, which is the more compelling reason to continue checking out a product?:
Do you ever feel like there just isn’t enough time in the day to accomplish all that you want? Of course, we all feel that way. However, we can become better at working on the right things, in order to get way more done that we did before. Productivity guru David Allen shares in Getting Things Done a method for getting your to-do list out of your head and into an actionable system.
This is the first of what I hope to be an ongoing list of blogs and websites that I take a few minutes to analyze and pull out useful tips based on what the site creator is doing right. For my first of these types of posts, I turn to Laura Roeder’s successful blog, LKR Social Media.
You start a blog, promising that THIS time you’ll stick to it for one reason or another. You stay strong for a short period, posting regularly…you are loving seeing the posts start to add up. You check your analytics, watching for the hockey stick growth–that never comes.
HI, I'M RYAN. I believe the best way to learn and remember is by writing things down and sharing them with others. This blog exists to help me synthesize and process my journey towards self-improvement.