Dan Blank, Author at WeGrowMedia - Dan Blank

How To Write a Great Blog Post in Just 15 Days

I was reading this blog post by Social Media Examiner recently:

How to Write a Great Blog Post in Just 15 Minutes

It’s actually a really good post, filled with useful tips on how to build good habits to come up with ideas, and create a blog writing workflow that removes barriers. Seriously, you should read it.

Now, I’ve seen posts like these before and tend to enjoy them; but I want to address another issue with creating great blog posts…

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t write a great blog post in 15 minutes. There have been rare occassions where I have written GOOD blog posts in 15 minutes, but usually it takes much longer, even just for a mediocre blog post.

A GREAT blog post? That is rare. GREATNESS is rare in general. So I want to talk about how to create a great blog post in 15 DAYS. Not minutes, not hours, but DAYS.

Because if you can create a GREAT blog post in 15 days, that is pretty special. I think that should be recognized more often. This isn’t fast food – this is GREATNESS.

So here are some steps to consider:

Observe The World
I find that my best work comes from observing the world outside of the topic I write about. That is why so many of my posts use music as a metaphor, talk about history, or how personal experiences relate to the shifting role of publishing and media. Look to nature, look to other markets, listen to those who are wise, but outside of your industry.
Don’t Be Reactionary, Create Something Unique
Get out of the echo chamber of your niche. Ever notice how a few “issues” seem to dominate headlines for awhile, and then are forgotten for new ones a few months later? Don’t focus on the short term, look at issues that affect your community in the long term. Look for topics that are critically important and under-reported.
Integrate Ideas
Sharing a variety of ideas and perspectives can take a bit of commentary from good to great. String together your best ideas to take things to that next level. Consider how different issues relate to each other. The problems facing your community are often much more complex than people make them out to be. Treat the topic with the respect it deserves – don’t simplify.
Sketch Out Your Blog Post
When I write, I may create an outline, and work across multiple drafts. Sometimes these are spread out on two computers, my iPad and my iPhone, as I sketch out ideas over time. I try to bring them together to sort them out, and give the post a purpose and structure that has the most value.
Do Your Research
Oftentimes, other folks will have written about the topic you are covering. Don’t be afraid to find out what they shared, and integrate their work into yours. There is nothing wrong with building on the work of others, as long as you give credit.
Let Ideas Breathe
Sometimes walking away from an idea is the best thing for it. Give a blog post room to breath. Write a solid draft, then take a few days away from it. I do this with a lot of things I create. It’s common for me to get a PowerPoint presentation 75% done, walk away from it for a day or two, come back and revamp the entire presentation. Yes, it’s more work, but the end product is better for it. The goal is not the PowerPoint, the goal is how it helps the audience I present it to.
Ask Others For Input
Send out emails, pick up the phone. People are flattered when you ask them for advice, and would love to be seen as an authority in their field. Don’t be afraid to leak out your ideas to a select few in order to get their input. Challenge your ideas. This will only make them stronger.
Edit the Blog Post Across Multiple Writing Sessions
I often spread out my efforts for a blog post across multiple writing sessions, coming back to it again and again to slowly make it better. This alleviates the immediate pressure to create something amazing in one sitting, and gives you time to process it between sessions. When you can approach a blog post with fresh eyes four separate times, it is likely to be better than if you only looked at it once.
Work On the Headline
Headlines are really important to convey the value and benefit of a blog post. Spend time on them. Consider not just if it describes the topic you are writing about, but if it is compelling enough to encourage people to click. In all likelihood, this huge effort you put into the full blog post could be lost if your headline isn’t great. You may want to consider doing keyword research, and see what types of headlines have worked well for you in the past, or for other bloggers.
Build Up Interest Within a Subgroup of People in Your Community
For many well established bloggers, their ideas and posts are spread so widely because they have established circles of colleagues and friends. These are people who seem to work together to share ideas, to comment on ideas, to spread ideas as far as they can. To give them wings. Build these relationships in your market. Depending on the topics you cover, you may have to focus on many different sub-niches. Content isn’t everything – relationships matter.
Cut Away As Much As You Can
It’s easy to write long, and very hard to write something of value that is also concise. Don’t be afraid to chip away at your blog post, cutting it down to the very best bits. Don’t feel that because you spent days or weeks on it that it needs to be long. Some of the world’s best songs are incredibly short and simple. Blog posts can be the same way.
Have Someone Else Edit It
Put another set of eyes on it, allowing them to check not just grammar and spelling, but the overall flow and purpose of the piece. It can be hard to create in isolation, involve others in the process.
Check Your Facts
It is amazing how quickly information spreads on the web and via social media. Take a moment to check your facts. Don’t always reach for the ‘publish’ button before doing so. One incorrect fact can ruin your entire effort and tarnish your credibility for a long time. Don’t take the risk.
Consider How It Relates to Your Business or Personal Goals
How does this blog post relate to the rest of your blog? How can you set yourself up for where this post will lead? Is it part of a larger topic you cover? If so, how can you link to them? Will you be covering this topic in other ways? When? How? Consider these things before you publish.
Plan How You Will Share It
An inherent part of the content creation process is sharing. How will you deliver this blog post to the world? Are there particular people that you want to share it with, are there certain communities who will appreciate it most? Reach out to them, get them involved.

There you have it. If you are lucky – REALLY lucky – this 15 days of work will not just have resulted in a great blog post, but actually pushed ideas forward within you and those in your community.

And that is how these these types of things should be measured – how did this blog affect those you are trying to serve. How did it help? You can’t measure this by page views or ReTweets. And I DO NOT mean that it is measured by “influence,” a weird term that was being talked about in social media recently.

The goal is to help, not to fill content buckets with new Tweets and blog posts.

Thanks!

-Dan

What Bob Dylan Can Teach Us About The Future Of Media

My life as I know it will soon disappear. Everything I have created in the past 37 years will cease to exist in a few days.

And I couldn’t be happier about it.

This has me considering how media is changing, how businesses are being run, and how we see opportunities and threats. There is a phrase in business I have never been comfortable with: “disruption.” To me, it focuses too much on the negative, too much on what was, not what will be.

Sometime this month, my first child will be born. And when this happens, in many ways, my life begins on that day. For one, I will change. I had dinner last night with someone who mentioned that when you walk out of the hospital with a newborn, the air is different, the sky is different. Every priority changes.

And for my child, everything I have done prior to the day he or she is born is simply a preface – that part of the book you skip over while getting to the meat of the story. Like when you watch a documentary about The Beatles, and they first review the economic status of Liverpool, England in the years before John and Paul met. You are just waiting for them to meet.

For those of you in media, in publishing; for the content creators and writers; for the marketers and business strategists, I wonder:

Are we so busy looking backwards at where we’ve been, that we aren’t focused on what we are becoming? That we are hoping too much that where we are going is where we have been?

I’m re-watching a documentary on Bob Dylan, and pausing it on a photo from his elementary school years. Here is a kid – a normal ordinary kid in a normal ordinary town – named Robert Zimmerman. Even though he has an appreciation for what was, this kid makes a decision:

To BECOME Bob Dylan.

His reasoning for the name change itself: “I just didn’t feel like I had a past, and I couldn’t relate to anything other than what I was doing at the present time.”

So Bob lived fully in the present. And in doing so, reshaped our culture. Even if you weren’t a fan, even if his music coincided with larger changes going on in the world, his influence amplified messages that changed us whether we liked it or not.

Most of Bob’s adult life has been spent becoming – creating his story. I remember he played a show in New Jersey a few years back, and how upset the audience was. Why? He played familiar songs to different tunes, changed tone and timing. The songs were the same, but they were unrecognizable. Bob was living in the moment.

But the audience only wanted to look back. They wanted to recapture something they felt years ago. Bob would have none of that. Bob is still becoming.

Are you?

Are we holding on to what was? To business models that are known and comfortable, serving needs that have since changed? Are we making decisions based on sentimentality – the feeling of holding a newspaper on a Sunday morning – or are we making decisions based on how we live today, with an eye on how we will live tomorrow?

Today is a new day. This is not a threat. This is not without appreciation for the past. It is merely an opportunity to become.

Knowledge is Useless Without Action

I’ve been slowly prying the lid off an online course I’m developing for writers to build their brand online, and am concerned about one thing:

I want my course to truly help people reach their goals, not just make them feel good about taking the course.

This has me considering how people learn, not just how to get them to buy my course. There is a distinct difference here.

There has been a tidal wave of “information products” on the web, from eBooks to forums to webinars to classes. Some of them are really cool, and some seem to be exercises in “conversion rates” and online sales. Some are “all about the launch,” after which, they begin preparing for releasing their next product.

But what happens after the purchase is what matters most. How effective is this course in shaping people’s lives? This is where knowledge turns to education, and education turns to a true affect on people’s lives, and through them, the world.

Did you go to college pursuing “a degree,” or did you pursue knowledge? Now that you are in the professional world, are you exercising the brand name of the college (eg: “I have an MFA from Brand X University”) or are you exercising the knowledge, turning thought into action; idea into reality?

The knowledge alone is often useless without integrating it with other knowledge, with other skills, with ideas, with other people, with the right time and place.

I want my course to help people, and this requires something more than delivering knowledge. It involves working together towards goals, through stumbling blocks, through the emotional mine field of stretching ourselves beyond our normal limits.

A teacher doesn’t deliver information. A teacher is a partner, someone who is learning as much from the student as the student is learning from them.

That is what I strive for as I build this course, and it’s been an interesting process. Hope you come with me on the journey…

I’ll be sharing more information on the course very soon.

Thank you!

-Dan

Failure is an Essential Part of Growth

We hide failure. And that is why we don’t succeed.

Too often in business and our personal lives, we cut off projects, actions, and strategies when they show even the slightest inkling of failing. When we fail at something, we rarely try it again, we run the other direction. You see this happen every day in publishing, media and marketing, in most every facet of business.

I watched “X Games: The Movie” on Netflix over the weekend, and it got me thinking about how we treat failure in the business world, and in our careers.

“I think failure is essential to growth just for the fact that when you fail, you learn what you messed up by doing it, and you go back and make it better.”
– Ricky Carmichael

Travis Pastrana makes the point during the movie that what X Games is about is progress – that unlike other sporting events, it rewards the effort of trying to do something new. Perfection is not the goal, evolution is. As the narrator puts it: “The present is the past. Only the future has currency.”

Is this how your business is run? Is this how you approach your career? Learning by trying, by failing, by trying again? Oftentimes we do the exact opposite, we study what others have done hoping to replicate their success without any of the risk of failure they faced in the process. That is why business books are such big sellers – we will buy anything that mitigates the emotional rollercoaster of actually learning through experience.

Managers need to reward effort.
Organizational cultures need to create a system where it is safe to fail.
We shouldn’t focus on what failed, but rather on what was learned.

Too many businesses are managed by fear. I don’t mean of managers instilling fear in their employees, but of managers being desperately afraid of being one failure away from losing their jobs or missing their bonuses. Of losing social standing in the corporate heirarchy if they are associated with a failed project. One would think that this fear would dissipate as someone progressed in their career, gained experience, credibility and a track record of success. But instead the opposite happens.

As managers reach higher levels of stature, they may feel they have more to lose. Corporations are constantly reorganizing, constantly reducing headcount, constantly trying to decide what expenses are too expensive to maintain. So many people make safe decisions, along expected paths. Anything new often represents risk – potential failure. New ideas are pursued more rarely, and with more caution. They are cut-short at the slightest sign that exponential growth isn’t just around the corner. Lessons from them shared only if it resulted in massive profit.

So we build organizational cultures like we build sports teams – with aggressive drive towards ‘success,’ pretending that there is nothing to be learned from failure. And this ignores so much of how the world works. The fact that even in sports, teams and players spend thousands of hours practicing before they hit the playing field. That there is a huge support system to analyze and learn from failure.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Why? Because when you let that fear determine your decisions, your life becomes full of expected actions. How will that help you do something incredible? How will that push you past boundaries? How will that help you grow?

Thanks!

-Dan