Dan Blank, Author at WeGrowMedia - Dan Blank

Don’t Wait for the Right Opportunity, Publish NOW.

Have you ever worked with someone who didn’t give 100%. Often, these people had passion and talent, but were waiting for the RIGHT opportunity before they really exerted themselves. So, job after job, they gave a half-hearted effort, and quit at the slightest sign of hard work because they felt it wasn’t worth their time.

They had dreams, they had the ability, but they rarely flexed that muscle.

For instance, I worked with a waiter years ago who joked around, messed up orders, rarely smiled, and never went out of his way to help a customer. When I got to know him, I found out he was really a pretty talented guy, had some interesting goals, but felt frustrated that he hadn’t found the right opportunity yet.

So he languished as a waiter in the same restaurant for years.

What could he have done differently? Instead of waiting until he had a job that was worth his best effort, he should have just given it his all:

Acted and presented himself like a professional.
Put smiles on the faces of his customers in unexpected ways.
Impressed his manager by offering to do things before asked.
Gotten to know his customers, building relationships one order at a time.
Supported his co-workers (both new and old), by sharing, giving & helping.

Why should he have put in all of this effort? Because our lives can be shaped in surprising ways by others. Many people get their jobs because of people they know, and they meet their significant others through similar means. John Lennon put it this way: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

I’ll bet you’ve seen similar things in your career, in a variety of different companies and roles. When we are stuck in a place we aren’t happy, why not give it our all? Why not develop a network around ourselves, develop our skills, and maximize the opportunity right in front of us, instead of waiting for something else to come along. Because this is the alternative:

How will anyone know how capable you are if you don’t develop your skills and prove that you are worthy of the opportunities they can give you?

It’s like the old saying: “The harder I worked, the luckier I got.”

So, what does this mean if you are a writer, an editor, a journalist, a creator of any kind? It means: PUBLISH NOW. However you can, wherever you can.

Blog. Tweet. Comment. Share. Help.

It means jumping into social media when you don’t feel ready. It means trying new formats when you don’t quite understand them yet. It means going out of your way to help others.

Doing so will grow your skills – forcing you to create and assist more often, and to confront the fear many of us have of putting ourselves in front of an audience or in an unfamiliar situation.

Publishing as often as you can also grows your network, and proves your value. Think you are writing incredible science fiction stories? Publish them on a blog. Think you are an expert in Dart Frog breeding habits, and hoping for a book deal? Publish now in any way you can.

And even beyond sharing: HELP. Publishing is no longer about the content, it is about the connection.

Thanks!

-Dan

Creating Great Content is Hard (there, I said it)

I love how the web is changing the way that we publish, empowering both creators and consumers in a myriad of ways.

Two trends concern me though:

The idea that great content is easy to create.
The idea that you can become an expert quickly.

I’ve paid a lot of attention to online training programs over the past year, where experts teach a group of people tips and strategies via online tools such as webcasts, forums, etc. Some of these programs get great reviews, such as Teaching Sells.

As these types of programs proliferate, I’m noticing more people whose expertise is based on a single experience, and who promise that creating and leveraging great content online is easy.

For instance: “Here is the 1 Amazing Tip to Catapult You to YouTube Stardom.”

But the reality is, creating great content is often very difficult. It takes years of practice, and a fair amount of luck. Even the best directors, writers and musicians struggle to follow up one hit with a second hit. Many who have early success spend decades living off the halo effect of that initial effort, unable to recreate that magic.

Gary Vaynerchuck makes this clear in his book Crush It. He talks about using social media to reach your goals, but he tells you that you will need to be waking up at 5am and going to bed at 2am. The story of what he has created is inspiring, but he is careful to not sell it as a quick fix for your life.

This is why traditional media will continue to be valuable, and the experts within that field can do so much to succeed on the web. Editors, journalists, writers, photographers, musicians and creators of all kinds.

Yes, the revenue models have changed. But their knowledge and ability to create something from nothing will be valuable on any platform, at any time.

So the real question is: will you be one of those creators? Someone who looks past traditional revenue models, to jump into the online world and try new things – to take skills you have developed through your entire career, and use them in new ways?

Thanks!

-Dan

Writers: Can You Achieve Your Dreams With Just 217 Fans?

If your goal is to be a writer, do you NEED a published book to succeed in that goal? What if it flops, if no one reads it, if you don’t make back your advance, if thousands of your books go right to the landfill, and if you never get another book deal again? Is your goal still fulfilled?

Dan Blank What I’m asking is: if your goal is to be a writer, what does that have to do with a book? Now, I love books, and I understand how having a published book can benefit a writer in hundreds of obvious ways.

But is the book essential to you becoming a writer? Is the goal the book – the THING – or is the goal to have a dedicated AUDIENCE of readers?

There is a huge difference.

I want to share one example of what I mean, and it’s a take-off on the 1,000 true fans concept. A band I really like called Crooked Fingers recently, they posted something on Kickstarter.com that went like this:

They asked fans to fund the production of a new collection of songs. The studio time and overall cost would be $5,000. So they offered fans a variety of things to buy that would fund the project. For example: I donated $15, and in return, I get a copy of the vinyl record if they reach their goal of $5,000.

The result? In less than 48 hours, 217 people bought something, resulting in $5,200, exceeding their overall goal. A couple of weeks later, they have more than $7,000 with 324 backers. Interestingly, this was largely collected by small donations of $15-$100, for which each fan got a copy of the album or concert tickets. A very fair trade – this was by no means a donation model where people are asked to give money out of sheer good will. They got very cool stuff in return, worth at least what they paid for them.

Okay, so here are some lessons we can pull from this:

This front-loads your career. The band now knows that it can afford to record the EP and go on tour, as opposed to planning the project and hoping that there is enough interest.
They learn WHO their fans are. This is incredibly valuable, there are so many ways they can connect to and leverage their top 300 fans to turn that number into 400 top fans.
The band didn’t need to have thousands of devoted fans, just 217 to reach their goal. What’s more, these fans only needed to be willing to buy a product for a reasonable amount of money. It didn’t diverge from the way people traditional relate to a band – no new behaviors were needed.
This group can be a band and make music that is loved, and do so without a record label, without a national ad campaign, without touring every day. Is it their idealistic dream? Probably not. But does it work? Yep, it does.

Sites like Kickstarter do this for all kinds of creators, just as Adopt-a-Classroom performs a similar function for teachers and schools. They break down the larger goals into small ways that people can hear your story, connect with you, and become a part of the solution.

Is that any different for writers?

The goal is not the ‘thing’ is it? The book? Isn’t the goal to reach someone – to connect with an audience – to inspire, to education, to entertain? A book is a phenomenal way to do that. But is it the ONLY way?

Now, there is another whole side to this. That, if you are able to create an audience of 217 fans WITHOUT a book, that you are much more likely to get a book deal. This is why authors who have already built a platform have an easier time getting published. They’ve proven that they can build an audience and that they know how to connect with them.

Instead of HOPING to find an audience, they PROVE that they already have one.

But again – what if we remove the option to be published. Would you be satisfied if you shared 1 short story a month on your own website, and had 300 fans who LOVED you. Not 20,000 page views, not 3,000 Twitter followers, but 300 people who read every word you wrote, and loved it.

And if you wouldn’t be satisfied with this: why not?

This question is most interesting to me not for the top authors of the world, the top 1% who have incredible expertise or writing skill, but the thousands of people who want to be writers, but will likely never get a book deal. What concerns me is that without the validation of the published book, many people don’t consider themselves writers.

And I wonder: what if 1,000 unpublished authors, instead of giving up, engaged 300 people each. That’s 300,000 fans. And what if, every year for 20 years, each of those authors kept sharing their work, and slowly grew their fan base my a mere 20 fans a year.

Well, in 20 years, those 1,000 authors would not have a total of 700,000 fans. 700 fans each.

I know, for many who dream of being famous authors, the thought of dying with only a few hundred fans seems like a letdown. But for most, the alternative is that many would-be writers never develop their craft enough to publish, to share, and end up with zero fans. Their efforts sit alone in a drawer, never finished, never shared.

When I consider the band I mentioned above, I am reminded that it took just 217 connections for them to pursue their dream of recording new songs. Can you build 217 fans for your dreams?

Thanks!

-Dan

Shhhh. Twitter Gets Oh So Quiet on the Weekends.

Every weekend, something peculiar happens on Twitter: it gets really really quiet. I follow about 550 people on Twitter, and uring business hours on a weekday, I get dozens of updates every few minutes. When I’m away from Twitter for an hour, there are 100 new Tweets waiting for me.

The weekend is another story. I can go a couple hours without checking Twitter, and come back to very few Tweets. Heck, it’s almost manageable!

So what does this tell me about Twitter? A few things:

Twitter is primarily used as a part of people’s careers. They are most active on it when sitting in front of their computers all day at work.
People tend to talk about interesting news and ideas on the weekdays. This is similar to how many blogs update daily on the weekdays, but don’t update at all on the weekends.
Yes, the people of Twitter have real lives, and are not always updating the world as to what they are eating and where they are going. They – thankfully – seem to reserve the weekend time for family, friends, and perhaps stepping away from screens.
Despite the many trends that have emerged, we are all not lifestreaming – constantly sharing every moment of our days. Even those I know who are very active on social media services have quiet periods, or obvious chunks of their lives that are rarely shared on sites like Twitter.
A social media strategy has balance. Yes, perhaps some people do check Twitter 20 times a day, but that those hours are often when doing so is most effective. These same people may not check at all after 6pm, and may take weekends and vacations off. There is an odd sense of balance here.

Mostly, it tells me that the weekends are an opportunity. I’ve noticed how TechCrunch will often try to sway the weekend discussion by releasing a big diatribe on a weekend. It usually isn’t related to breaking news either – because the vacuum of the weekend is a chance for someone to open up a new line of discussion.

Much like the many weekday trends (Follow Friday, etc), weekends on Twitter could turn into something else entirely for your community. New types of content, discussions or connections. How will you use this opportunity?

Opportunity often lies not in following what’s popular, but in looking for the gaps – discovering something no one else sees, and slowly shaping it into something of value.

Thanks!

-Dan

Are You Drowning in Social Media Busywork?

Dan Blank I can remember weeks when I worked in a cube in an office building on Park Avenue in Manhattan, and I was swamped. So much going on, so busy. And let’s face it, that made me feel like a professional, it made me feel like an adult, and it made me feel proud.

And I can remember getting to a Friday, looking back on the crazy week, and realizing, that, for all intensive purposes, all I did was answer email.

I spent my days REACTING.

The problem is that I didn’t CREATE anything. None of my projects moved forward in any meaningful way. The week was filled with meetings and documents and back & forth emails. All the processes behind creating stuff. But very little stuff was actually created.

Years later, I have no idea what those projects may have been.

I simply kept checking emails, kept reacting, kept up that aura of “OMG, I’m so busy I don’t have time to eat, I MUST be valuable to the company.”

A validation. A validation strengthened by each email reply, by each meeting added to the calendar.

The truth is: FEELING BUSY and actually DELIVERING VALUE are two separate things.

And this is the danger of social media – having tons of interactions, tons of reaction, but at the end of the day/week/month/year, you have built nothing.

Sure, the interactions alone have value on a personal and professional level, but if you are in media, if you are a writer or a creator – you need to be creating a body of work. There has to be a there there.

Something that exists beyond Tweets, beyond one platform, time or place. “The Work” lives on beyond you, it tells people who you are, and it brightens their day. The Work is the embodiment of what you bring to the world.

Seth Godin talks about this when he tells us that we must “ship” – that unless we create something that is shared with the world, that we are just spinning our wheels.

Sonia Simone talks about how she rigorously schedules her day, with periods of work divided into chunks: 50 minutes work, 10 minutes of social media. Of taking two hour blocks of time a day to be without an internet connection.

And this is why I have become such a believer in setting goals for each day, each week, each month, each year.

This is why I set expectations & deadlines with others, so I have to be accountable for delivering value, not just feeling busy.

This is why measurement is so important. How analytics, research and feedback determine whether the work was effective, not just if it was done.

With so many communication streams coming into our lives each day, it’s so easy to say “I replied to 40 customer queries.” But the harder question to answer is: what was the affect? What did you build?

Be sure that you don’t get caught up in the echo chamber of the web – that you build something unique and original – a body of work, not just a reaction.

Thanks!

-Dan