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5 Strategies For Crafting A Rocking Editorial Calendar

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An editorial calendar will keep you on track to produce epic content. You can use this calendar to determine and maintain a consistent publishing schedule.

When I didn’t have my editorial calendar, I sometimes forgot to publish a blog post. I’d incorrectly schedule some blog posts to the point where 2-3 got published in one day.

At a point, I became inconsistent in blogging, and my editorial calendar looked ugly. Looking at that barren calendar helped me get back on my feet and commit to writing more content to enhance the overall experience.

If you want an epic editorial calendar, follow these five strategies.

#1: Write New Content Every Day

The best way to become a better blogger is to write new content every day. I’ve taken this a step further by publishing one new blog post every day.

It takes more time than just writing one blog post each week, but this level of commitment ensures I show up every single day.

At the beginning, writing and publishing a new blog post every day may seem daunting, but it isn’t very difficult once you get on board. Any task can turn into a seemingly effortless habit with continued implementation.

Sure, you’ll have to think of more content ideas, but it’s well worth it in the long run. You’ll give your readers a better experience and more chances to see your content.

Based on my blogging schedule, I also decided to up my podcasting game. I currently publish one new episode every weekday. At the rate I’m interviewing people, I may soon make Breakthrough Success a daily podcast.

Plus, I love interviewing people and hearing their insights.

I even have plans on daily YouTube videos in the future, but that isn’t as near term as some of the things I’m doing now.

Daily YouTube videos can make a comeback for my brand by the end of Q1 of 2018. Do everything in your power to make daily your frequency. People remember the people they see daily.

And if you come out with valuable content every day, you eventually won’t have to tell your audience to check out your content. They’ll instinctively want to check it out.

#2: Plan Weekly Revivals

As you create new content every day, you must remember you have a library of old content forming your brand’s core. While some of your old pieces of content don’t drive any traffic, there are other pieces of content that continue driving traffic.

These are the pieces of content you need to focus on. Small updates here can generate big gains all across the board.

Updating your old content will give it new life on search engines. However, during these updates, you can link to your newer content. Every week, you can link to at least two of your newer blog posts in an older piece of content.

Use the older content to drive traffic to the newer content.

If you receive an old piece of content every week, that gives you 52 possibilities.

#3: Get Contributors Involved

You can only do so much on your own. Inviting contributors to help with content creation will take you to the next level. Content will literally be given to you. When you publish this content on your platform, the other person will promote it to their community.

That’s how guest blogging, appearing on podcasts, and similar relationships work.

If you have one contributor every day (you can split this up amongst your content), you’ll have at least one person sharing your content every day. Some people in your contributors’ audiences will decide to share the post.

Your content brand can get massive exposure with this one approach. But that depends on how much you scale this approach.

#4: Incorporate Multiple Media Formats

You can have a preferred media format, but you need to incorporate multiple formats throughout your journey.

I am in my zone when I am creating blog posts, podcast episodes, or videos. Since there are the fewest barriers of entry for blogging, writing is my preferred format. Podcasting comes in as a close format because even though the prep work does take some time, the advice I get from the interviews is golden.

Video is one area that I’m developing in. I have no problem with providing a valuable video, but starting is the problem. Starting is more challenging than the action itself. That’s true for most actions in life.

The reason you can’t stick with one content format is because your targeted audience isn’t doing that either. Some people in your targeted audience only have time to listen to podcasts on the way to work.

If you only write blog posts, you lost that ever-growing segment of the market. You can tap into that market by launching a podcast and updating it at least once per week.

If you only create videos, then you lost me. I get most of my information from reading blog posts and books. Only when I’m exercising will I listen to audiobooks or podcasts, but I almost never watch videos.

#5: Theme Your Free Content Around Product Launches

High-end product launches and service offerings are where most of the revenue is made. To get the lion’s share of that revenue, you need to warm up your audience to those promotions.

The promotion for any launch starts well before the actual promotion date.

If I’m promoting a product about social media, I’m creating new blog posts and videos about social media. I’ll publish these blog posts and videos several weeks before the product launch and all the way to the product launch date.

Don’t just publish random content at random times. Your content gets your audience interested in a topic. Getting them interested in the right topics at the right times can, no exaggeration, double your income.

I’m writing more content about content marketing because I know my audience wants that type of content. With this in mind, I also created the Content Marketing Plaza, my high-end training course.

I know you would be less interested in the Content Marketing Plaza if I wrote about productivity all of the time.

Bias your content creation towards what you plan to promote. I identify all of the products and services I promote at least six months out so I know what type of content I need to create.

While this is harder for a podcast, I can even change episode numbers to ensure that the right guests and topics get published at the right times.

Don’t just be strategic with promoting your content, but also be strategic with which content you publish and when you publish those pieces of content.

In Conclusion

An epic editorial calendar gives you the framework you need to consistently provide your audience with valuable content.

If you are not producing new content every day, you risk falling behind. Audiences are increasingly gathering around people who can produce content more often than once a week.

In fact, you may consider publishing multiple new pieces of content every day across multiple platforms. Who’s to say that you can’t publish a blog post and a podcast episode every day?

You’ll be putting more of your time on the line, and doing so will force you to think of new and creative ways to spread the word. Even if your initial blog posts get zero traffic, taking action every day will eventually lead you to the goldmine.

What were your thoughts on these tactics to craft a rocking editorial calendar. Do you have any best practices for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Do What You Say You’ll Do

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We all give ourselves goals. While some people give themselves more ambitious goals than others, we declare what we’ll accomplish.

Stating what you’ll do and actually doing it are two different things.

Experience has taught us the truth behind that statement. Sometimes we don’t do what we’ll say. At other times, we watch other people not do as they say.

Repeatedly falling short of your goals is one of the biggest bumps you can hit along the journey. Some people feel stuck after trying again and again only to see no results.

However, there are some people who do as they say they’ll do. They’re the ones accomplishing all of their top goals. They’re the role models we look up to when our journeys get difficult.

While these people are our role models, the intent of having a role model is to someday reach their status, surpass them, or get significantly close to doing so. To do that, we need to do more of what we say we’ll do.

We need to accomplish more of the goals we give ourselves. Here’s the framework you can use to make that happen.

Get Clear On What You Want To Do

The first step towards achievement is getting clear on what you want to do. While this seems straightforward, it’s actually more complex. You need to look deeper behind each of the goals you give yourself.

In some cases, there is a goal behind the goal. A social media marketer may want to double his/her Twitter audience this year because that goal supports the goal of getting 100,000 blog visitors in one month.

An up-and-coming public speaker may decide to organize a meet-up in an attempt to land more public speaking gigs in the future.

We need to differentiate between our goals that are goals themselves and our other goals which move us closer towards our ideal goals.

Think more big picture for this part. By thinking of the big picture, you can expand your possibilities. For you, it may be easy to double your Twitter audience given your audience size. For me, it’s much more difficult. As of writing, doubling my Twitter audience means gaining another 400,000 followers.

That’s a goal that takes multiple years to reach given my current set up. I could tweak my set-up to achieve that goal in a year, but it would be an incredible challenge.

Instead of aiming to double my Twitter audience every year, I now ask 10 people (using permission marketing) to share my content every day.

Based on my ideal goal of getting 100,000 monthly visitors, it makes more sense for me to leverage permission marketing than aim to double my Twitter audience in one year.

One is very difficult while the other is easy. Permission marketing is also very scalable and can result in more long-term traffic than doubling my Twitter audience.

By identifying the ideal goals and the goals that only serve as passageways towards those ideal goals, you can determine your destination but maintain a flexible approach.

The flexible approach is important, but you only achieve that flexible approach by getting clear on what you want. If you need to get clear on what you want, and you don’t know how to categorize your goal, ask yourself this question:

Where do I want this to lead me?

Growing my social media audience is my way of getting more blog traffic.

Getting more blog traffic is my way of growing my email list.

So the ideal goal is to grow my email list. Blog traffic and social media growth are the passageways towards that goal. You can take different passageways. As long as you know where you’re supposed to end up, you have a much better chance of getting there.

Write It Down

I know that may be happening. Your mind is streaming with ideas and goals. You may feel excited now, but you need to give those ideas and goals a place to breathe. Ideas and goals breathe and grow on paper.

Writing your goals has been proven to dramatically increase the likelihood of you accomplishing that goal.

Writing down your declaration every day will train your subconscious to look for and think of new opportunities. This is why people who write their goals soon plan out the action steps. Your subconscious is preparing you behind the scenes to accomplish the goal.

You should write your top goal down every day. The more you write your goal, the more engrained it will become in your subconscious.

Schedule Time To Get It Done

If it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t get done. The reason I’ve interviewed hundreds of people is because all of those interviews were in my calendar. If those interviews weren’t scheduled, they wouldn’t have happened.

While it’s easy to understand this concept with interviews and meetings, you can also schedule various tasks throughout your day.

What time will you write your blog post? What time will you do videos? When will you take your breaks?

All of these need to be scheduled in your calendar. Scheduling your goals will put you on the road to goal achievement and eliminate the decision making process.

One of the reasons people fall short of their potential is because they have too many decisions. Do you write the blog post or promote yourself on social media? If you decide to promote yourself on social media, which social network do you use? How do you use that social network? When do you decide to move onto the next task?

It hurt my mind just to write those questions, but questions like these wildly dash through our minds every day. Scheduling specific actions for specific times and dates eliminates this problem. Get your life on a schedule, and then you’ll end up doing more of what you say you’ll do.

To crave your need for spontaneity, you can give yourself some breaks in the day when you can do anything you please.

Delegate Most Of The Tasks In Your Life

I’ve been mentioning this more and more throughout my content. If you are not delegating, you will eventually stop moving forward. All of the most successful CEOs on the planet have hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of employees working for their businesses.

Not all of the tasks in your life are created equal. Coaching your clients is more important than responding to non-client emails, but responding to these emails is still necessary. New emails create a sense of urgency which is often mixed up with importance.

How do you handle urgent emails and pursue important tasks such as coaching your clients? You delegate more tasks. You can delegate the responses for some of those emails. You can hire someone to grow your social media audience.

The more you delegate, the more of your time will open up. You can use this extra time to accomplish bigger goals that lead to a bigger profit. Not only will you do what you say you’ll do, but you can also set higher standards for yourself.

Instead of aiming for $5K/mo, you can go for $10K/mo.

With delegation, there are no limits to how much of your time you can get back. Just make surer the actions you take with your newfound time can easily pay off your employees’ salaries.

Keep Yourself Accountable

You can set up your process so that only you know about your goals. The issue with this route is that you can lie to yourself, even if you have good intentions.

Let’s say you got 1,000 blog visitors last month. If your goal was to get 7,000 blog visitors this month, and you end up getting 6,000 blog visitors, it’s tempting to call that a success and ignore the fact that you set a bigger goal.

Don’t get me wrong. A sixfold increase in monthly traffic is amazing. However, we can’t shrink the target if we’re worried about our abilities. The target you set at the start of the month should stay the same from Day 1 to the final day.

Stay true to the goals that you set. If you don’t, then it will be more difficult to do as you say you’ll do.

Instead of using private accountability to accomplish your goals, you need to leverage public accountability. Tell your quality friends and peers (the ones who will help and encourage you. Do not tell people who will tear you down) about your big goals.

You can also partner up with an accountability partner so you can keep each other on track. I’ve seen accountability partnerships where the person who achieves less of his/her ideal goals gives $50 to the person who achieved more of his/her ideal goals.

You can also join a Facebook Group where you post about your goals every day or week depending on the group. You can even publicly post your goals on social media and your blog.

It’s always better to let a small group of people know about your goals than no one at all.

In Conclusion

We all seek to become better at what we care about. We’ll set big goals and make mighty claims. Some of these people don’t accomplish their goals. Others hit their targets and push them further away to ignite more growth.

Your level of success depends on you identifying the right goals to focus on and then getting them done. Remember, if you’re going to give yourself a big goal, take massive action so you can see your goals become part of your reality.

What were your thoughts on these tactics? Do you have any advice for us? Do you have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Important Elements of a Perfect Guest Post Contribution

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guest blogging pitch

This is a guest contribution from Hugh Beaulac

You’ve found your niche, and creating new content on your own site brings you joy, but you also don’t forget to find reputable websites to submit guest posts.

And you want to contribute to top blogs that match your niche, right?

It takes time and energy to rank, and proficient bloggers understand how valuable that is in terms of link juice, and if a blogger accepts your submission, you enter an already-established community, sharing your message.

In short, guest posting gives you many opportunities, and here are some other reasons why it is great:

  • It allows you to build your writing portfolio and get your name out.
  • Collaboration with top-notch blog owners helps to become a better writer.
  • It helps to establish contacts with other bloggers and find new readers.
  • It’s a way to find potential clients.
  • You can get a backlink for your site.

Although blog owners also know core benefits to accepting guest posts, they want to collaborate with trustful writers only. If you can prove your expertise and knowledge, you can be featured on top-notch websites.

But…

How to create a perfect guest post contribution? You’ll learn how to craft it in this blog post.

 

#1: Do Research

Have you found a website you want to contribute to? Great!

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and do research before bothering a blog owner. The more you know about the website, its owner, its values, and writing style, the more chances you have to hook a blogger.

How to do research:

  • Read submission guidelines to follow the instructions;
  • Analyze published content to find what topics have been covered on the site;
  • Pay attention to a content calendar to understand what type of content is in demand;
  • Find contact info and blogger’s name.

Before contacting the blog owner,  analyze the website to understand more about its audience and their needs. If applicable, follow guidelines closely as it’s a proven way to show your interest in contributing to the site.

 

#2: Write an Eye-Catching Email Pitch

In the business environment, we write many emails daily.

If you don’t get as many replies as you might want, just imagine:

The more popular a blog owner is, the more emails he or she receives daily.

What does it mean? You need to send an eye-catching email pitch that will be both interesting and useful!

Writing emails that don’t convert is just a waste of time and effort, so do your best to send a solid email.

So, how to write a brilliant guest post pitch?

  • Personalize an email by adding blogger’s name;
  • Introduce yourself;
  • Describe the purpose of your email;
  • Write down several guest post ideas that might be a good fit for the site;
  • Create a short outline for every topic;
  • Provide a blog owner with the best links to your recently published articles.

guest blogging pitch

Sending an email pitch, you make an impression on bloggers and help them make the final decision whether they need your assistance or not. Once you start writing better emails, you can reach influencers and get your topic approval.

 

#3: Craft a Well-Written Article

Once a blog owner has chosen a blog post topic, it’s high time to start crafting a well-written article as writing a post gives no guarantees of acceptance.

Criteria for a well-written article:

  • Comprehensive and smooth content that offers new perspectives;
  • Actionable tips and pieces of advice;
  • Statistics proofs;
  • Visuals that support ideas (infographics, screenshots, images, etc.);
  • Links to other posts on the blog;
  • Improved readability of your article (headings and subheadings, the text is divided into chunks,  short sentences, bold/italic/underline font styles, etc.).

If you need the ultimate guide to writing a compelling blog post, here it comes:

  • Analyze your potential readers, their needs, and problems to give them what they crave.
  • Do research and collect useful information, statistics, data, case studies, etc.
  • Create an outline to put down all important insights and make your writing easier.
  • Write the article, adding visuals.
  • Give it some time and proofread/edit the text.

If you offer evergreen, unique and compelling content, people will read it with a big pleasure. Plus, it’s more likely they will share it on their social media which means attracting new visitors to the blog. All in all, publishing a well-written article gives many advantages for a blog owner, readers, and the author.

#4: Promote on Social Media

Congratulations! Your article went live on the blog!

You’ve put much time and effort into it, but it’s not enough to satisfy a blog owner’s needs. After publishing the article, it’s time to promote it to attract more readers!

Don’t hesitate to share your article via social media.

By the way, do you know the power of social media?

All the above-mentioned stats prove that sharing articles on social media helps to attract more readers and promote your text without investing money. If you help to drive traffic to the website, a blog owner might be thankful and, therefore, you can be invited to write another post in the future!

#5: Communication with Readers

Experienced bloggers know that putting readers first is a surefire way to create a perfect post. If you write an article thinking about your audience’s needs and expectations, you should stick around and respond to comments on the post after it has been published.

For a variety of reasons, communication with readers is crucial, and you’d better reply to their comments as fast as you can.

If readers interact with you after reading a blog post, it’s a great sign that the material was interesting for them. Encourage people to leave comments and involve them into communication to hold audience’s attention and make them want to check the website over and over again.

In Conclusion

Being a successful guest blogger pays off, so try to contribute to profitable websites and always think about benefits a blog owner may get with you.

If you need to understand top reasons guest content is declined, pay attention to picture below:

guest post requirements

Learning from common mistakes most guest contributors make is a great way to stand out from the competitors and be featured on top websites.

Have we left something off the list? Share your thoughts in comments!

Hugh Beaulac is a writer who runs MC2 blog and writes on various topics. He contributes to different websites, so Hugh knows how to give a blog owner what his/her audience craves. 

How To Get More Blog Traffic With Less Work

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If you ask a blogger about his/her goals, it won’t take long before you hear “get more blog traffic” as one of those goals.

It takes a considerable amount of work to boost your blog traffic, especially in the beginning. The work is worth it in the long-term, but you can take some shortcuts along the way. These shortcuts will cut down on your workload so you can commit more time towards other priorities.

Even then, you may still find yourself committing a significant amount of time towards promotion. However, certain tasks can be reduced or even eliminated.

Create Evergreen Posting Cycles

If you’re the person continuously scheduling your social media posts, put this as Priority #1. Scheduling your social media posts seems like a priority, but with so much automation available, it’s more harm than good to continue scheduling your content.

Instead, you need to create an evergreen posting cycle. That way, all of your social media posts sequentially get posted over and over again in an infinite loop. I only create new tweets 2-3 times per year when I want to incorporate more of my new content into my current evergreen posting cycle.

I don’t have to constantly copy, paste, and write social media posts over and over again. This is the beauty of automation.

For a while, I used HootSuite’s bulk uploader which allowed me to schedule over 100 tweets in just six clicks. Since then, I now use ViralTag which may be more expensive, but it has evergreen posting cycles for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and many others.

I set up these evergreen cycles once and forget about them. The rest takes care of itself.

Republish Your Old Content

It’s great to publish new content. In fact, I write a new blog post every day. However, you can republish your older content to save time.

The idea behind this tactic is that instead of writing a 1,000 word blog post (or more depending on your preference) you update an existing piece of content. Preferably, update one of your top pieces of content.

By updating your top content, you’ll get search engines to notice and point more traffic to that content. You can also use successful content to drive more traffic to your new and emerging content.

Some bloggers have such massive libraries of content that all they do is republish and hone their existing content. You may not be at that point yet, nor may you want to implement that approach, but it’s worth considering.

These same bloggers that only update their new content frequently write guest posts to drive more traffic to their content. These bloggers often publish their best content on other people’s blogs while still providing immense value on their blogs.

Delegate Tasks

I always look for more ways to delegate tasks within my business. The more tasks you can delegate, the more of your time you can commit towards other areas.

And not all tasks are created equal.

You only perform certain tasks because they are necessary for your business. These tasks generate no revenue but help keep everything in place. Scheduling new content, editing the content, growing your social media audience, and other tasks fit the list.

You need to delegate these types of tasks and focus on what only you can do (i.e. creating videos for a training course).

Some of these tasks may be difficult to hand over. I know it was difficult for me to hand over my Twitter growth to someone else. However, that decision was well worth it and allowed me to pursue other ventures.

If I had to continue growing my Twitter audience on my own, there’s no way I would have hosted the Breakthrough Success Podcast or any virtual summits.

Delegating more tasks opens the doors to more opportunities, and more importantly, time to think. You can think about how you’ll expand instead of just doing.

Taking 10-15 minutes to do nothing but think of ways to expand is one of the most powerful ways to grow your business. It’s similar to creating an outline for each blog post you write. You know that the initial time it takes to create the outline will save you massive time and result in a higher value blog post.

Think of the 10-15 minute daily “Thinking Time” as writing a blog post outline for the longest piece of content you’ll ever write. It’ll definitely come out better with the initial Thinking Time.

Craft Email Rubrics

Most people spend an extraordinary amount of time in their inboxes. It seems like for every email we reply to, three new emails come to replace it.

Your inbox is a crowdsourced to-do list which, without moderation, will pull you away from what you’re actually supposed to do.

You may also send emails to reach out to more people. While this can be delegated, many people prefer to do the outreach themselves or at least in the beginning.

Eventually you’ll find yourself writing the same kinds of emails and answering the same questions over and over again. Understanding this principle is essential for getting out of your inbox quicker.

Instead of writing a different email each time, begin crafting email rubrics. Keep those emails in an easy to access folder on your computer.

The next time you respond to the same question here’s what you should do:

Head over to the email rubrics folder

Copy the appropriate email rubric

Paste the rubric into the email

Include the person’s name

Send

This will save you a lot of time. Instead of writing the email word-for-word over and over again, you can click a few buttons and then the exact email shows up. You can also apply this for outreach emails and any emails you find yourself sending often.

As bloggers, we will get the same types of emails. Developing rubrics for our responses will streamline the process so we can respond to and send more emails in a shorter period of time.

In Conclusion

Blogging take a lot of work. You have to create, promote, and monetize your content. None of those three key factors can be missing.

However, there are ways to streamline the process and cut through the noise. Delegation will help you streamline any process, but you should consider automation first. There is no reason to delegate a task that can be easily automated.

Regardless of how much time you shave off from your process, commit to implementing at least one tactic from this blog post. Whether it’s contacting potential employees on a site like UpWork or getting started with ViralTag, get in the habit of taking action based on what you read.

What were your thoughts on these tactics for getting more blog traffic with less work? Do you have any additional tactics for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Get Out Of Writer’s Block

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Writer’s block is the last place any content creator can be. This affliction results in the blank screen that stays blank for a very long time. When writer’s block strikes, we need to put it out as quickly as possible.

This article will show you how to get out of writer’s block so your creative mind can continue to flow and provide ideas with ease.

#1: Ask Your Audience For Topics

Asking your audience is one of the best ways to get out of writer’s block. Not only will you receive many ideas, but these are ideas your audience wants more of. By providing more of what your audience wants, you’ll attract new visitors and have a more loyal audience.

In our effort to amplify our voices, we must remember that our audiences appreciate when their voices are heard. Listen to them by asking them for topic ideas. You might just stumble across a content idea that ignites your blog traffic.

#2: Consume More Content

I consume as much content as possible, especially when I’m running out of ideas. I read anywhere from 10 to 30 books every month (lately it’s been closer to 10). I read paperbacks and Kindle eBooks. I listen to audiobooks and podcast episodes.

I also publish five episodes on the Breakthrough Success Podcast every week. This isn’t just a shameless plug. Understand that for me to continue publishing episodes at this rate, I must, on average, interview at least five people every week. That’s over 250 people I interview every year, and since I usually interview more than 5 people every week, that number is closer to 300.

If I choose to turn Breakthrough Success into a daily podcast or run some more virtual summits this year, I’ll interview over 400 people every year.

I consume a lot of ideas just by interviewing people. Combine that with all of the time I spend reading and listening to content, and you can understand how much content I’m willing to consume to get better at my craft.

#3: Hack Your Mind When In The Writing Flow

Writer’s block doesn’t just happen when you can’t think of a new idea. Writer’s block sometimes happens when you’re in the middle of an idea.

You briefly leave your computer, return to the idea, and then you find yourself stuck. A blog post that once flowed so easily now feels stuck in a traffic jam.

How do you continue writing midway through a blog post when the ideas aren’t flowing out as well.

The answer is to hack your mind when you are in the writing flow. The best approach is to finish a piece of content from start to finish. This isn’t always possible, especially for a book, but there is another solution.

Before you stop typing and give yourself a break, type part of a sentence. Not the whole sentence. Just part of one.

When you return to that piece of content, your mind will quickly retrace its steps and you’ll remember where you left off. You’ll finish typing the second half of that sentence and then continue as if there was no interruption.

#4: Stop Writing & Stop Talking

It’s very common for most content creators to stop writing for a moment. Writer’s block is in the way.

It’s much less common to be without any words to say. In fact, it’s so rare for anyone to be speechless or out of words that it’s a big deal when it happens.

Writer’s block is different. It’s one of those universally understood idea among most bloggers. But if you struggle to find words to say when hanging out with your friends and when it’s your turn to talk…that’s more shocking.

If you find yourself struggling to write a blog post, speak it. Let the words naturally flow and don’t think for a second about what you’re saying. This is off-the-cuff and can be edited later. All you have is a basic outline to steer you through the content creation process.

You can either keep the content in video form or transcribe the audio so you have a completed blog post. Just because it’s called writer’s block doesn’t mean the only solution is to write your way out of it.

#5: Write About Something Else

The very first book I planned to self-publish as a Kindle book was horrible. I knew 3,000 words in that this book was going to be an utter bust. Not only that, but I knew it would be painful for me to write.

I gave up on that book, and I’m proud of it.

If you find yourself in a project heading towards the dead end, don’t continue. Get out of that project so you can pursue something else with more promise. When you choose something promising, that’s when you don’t give up.

On some days, it will feel difficult to continue. I have many feelings like that with my own brand.

But the first book I was writing…horrible. I would need a lot of time to think what I was trying to get at in the book.

For blog posts, if you feel like you’re about to hit a dead end, you have two choices. The first choice is to scrap it like I did with my first book draft (and others). Each blog post you write makes you a better blogger, even if you don’t publish the blog post.

The second option is to write a new blog post. After you write that new blog post, return to the previous blog post that proved to be difficult. If you still find it difficult to write that one blog post after multiple attempts, scrap it. Until you scrap it, you’ll keep thinking about it and continue struggling to think of ways to finish it.

Even if you finish that type of blog post, it won’t be your best work. The best content you’ll ever produce is the content you enjoy creating.

In Conclusion

Writer’s block gets all of us at certain points. My favorite way for conquering writer’s block is to speak my way out of it. Even if I don’t transcribe videos and turn them into blog posts, I’ll speak about the topic.

As I speak about the topic, ideas will quickly flow out like a rushing stream. With these ideas in place, it will be easier for me to finish writing the blog post.

What were your thoughts on these tactics? Do you have any tactics for getting out of writer’s block? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

January 2018 Performance Report

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This was a special month for me. Not only is the start of a New Year very exciting, but I also celebrated my 20th birthday.

I’m no longer a teen entrepreneur, and that doesn’t bother me. In fact, I’m more excited than ever about my potential.

I established a few new key habits in my life and optimized what already worked.

 

My New Book Reading Habits

Yes, I forgot to track the books I read again. However, to make up for it, I will track them in the future and leave you with some new reading habits.

The first reading habit I developed is to read 5-10 books when I wake up. These 5-10 books are all the same books that I’ve already read. I’ll read 5-10 pages of each of these books and only read the parts that I underlined.

I choose high impact books that are easy for me to read at the start of the day. For example, The Compound Effect is one of these books, but I couldn’t stick with a social media based book because my mind isn’t ready for that at 4 am.

I’ve considered reading 5-10 different books to conclude my day which would be a guaranteed 10-20 books every month.

But how do I then read new books each month? As I originally did, I find time in my day to make it happen. However, I’m incorporating audiobooks into more parts of my life. I finally decided to listen to audiobooks during commutes. That’s had a big effect on my learning.

40 minutes each day. At the 1.5 speed rate, that’s an hour of audiobook content every day. With 30 hours of new audiobook content every month, I can get through 5-10 audiobooks each month depending on the average length of the audiobooks.

 

My Favorite Way To Learn

Knowledge acquisition is one of my top priorities. I know that if I expand my knowledge, I expand my potential.

Of all of the ways to learn, my favorite way to learn is by interviewing people on the Breakthrough Success Podcast. I interview at least five people each week. Since each interview is 30-45 minutes long (lately closer to the 45 minute side), I learn anywhere from 2.5 hours to 3 hours and 45 minutes every week.

From a content production standpoint, I have no need to boost this number right now. I have interviews done at least two months in advance. However, I want to continue learning new things and eventually turn Breakthrough Success into a daily podcast.

Also from that content production standpoint, I’d choose not to conduct any interviews during a two week vacation.

Podcasting is the best way to create a new piece of content. I can go on and on about podcasting, but I choose to stop here for now.

 

SkillShare Courses

Lately I’ve been creating more courses on SkillShare. This was inspired by one of my Thinking Sessions where I determined that I could easily generate more revenue by creating courses on SkillShare.

For me, this was an underutilized opportunity that didn’t take much time. My SkillShare courses are very short (10-30 minutes) which makes it possible for me to complete multiple courses in some days.

I’m in the process of choosing 2-3 days where I complete at least seven training courses. The goal is to eventually launch one new SkillShare course every day.

I’m focusing more of my time on SkillShare for a few reasons:

The Content Marketing Plaza has been fully buffed. I don’t need to add another update until a few weeks out.

SkillShare is the Netflix of learning. For $9.99/mo, you get unlimited access to the courses SkillShare provides. This makes binge learning possible. If you want to get your first two months free of charge, join SkillShare with this link.

The payment structure is a per minute basis. This payment structure gives me a greater incentive to create courses. The more minutes watched, the more money I make. SkillShare’s binge learning set-up also makes it beneficial to create more courses as one student may decide to watch all of your courses.

These aren’t as long as the Udemy courses I create. Right now, my plan for incorporating these courses into Udemy is to create a few themed mini courses on SkillShare and group them into one big Udemy course. However, this is yet to happen.

By the way, since I aim to eventually publish one new SkillShare course every day, what do you want to see? Please share in the comments after you read this month’s Performance Report.

I Will Be On More Podcasts In 2018

I can’t count the number of reasons why I enjoy interviewing people. At the same time, I couldn’t the number of reasons why I enjoy getting interviewed on other people’s shows. The big ones for me are the added exposure, reconnecting with myself, and reminding myself of my knowledge.

The first one is obvious so I won’t talk about that one. That’s why I’ll skip to the other two.

When I get interviewed, I almost always have to talk about my story. Sometimes we forget where we began, but getting interviewed reminds me of my roots. As we get deeper into the interview, I have to fully display my knowledge.

I know I also have to do this with every blog post I write, but interviews feel different. I get very specific questions and need to tailor my answer to the question and the host’s listeners.

I saw the impact of these interviews and my work in comments like these.

testimonial

Each time I’m interviewed, I take it very seriously. I want to create that level of impact with every interview. Obviously, some interviews are better than others. The host and guest need to flow, and in this case, Caitlin and I were absolutely jamming.

But to create the impact, I need to get on more podcasts. I’ll have a goal for that in February which I’ll talk about very soon.

 

Review Of January 2018 Goals

Here are my thoughts and progress on the goals I set for this month.

#1: Get Consistent CMP Sales: I am working hard to optimize the sales page. I have temporary discounts in play and will add more videos to the sales page soon. I’m using Chandler Bolt’s SPS sales page as a guide.

#2: Plan A Meet-Up: I recently learned that I can simply contact some local libraries and get my book in there. I learned this from one of the guests I had on my show. Instead of planning a meet-up, I sent several pitches to places I could speak at over the summer. My fingers are crossed.

#3: Schedule All Content Past March: My blog posts are done past February and my podcast episodes are done past March. The only challenge is scheduling them, but I am working to delegate this task soon.

 

February 2018 Goals

Now that I’ve reviewed my goals for February, I’ll provide the list of goals I have for February 2018:

 

#1: Contact 50 Podcast Hosts

Instead of setting a goal for the number of interviews I get in February, I will set a goal for the number of podcast hosts I contact.

I know that as I land on more podcasts, I’ll get more requests to be on other people’s podcasts. The initial work I do will pay great dividends later on.

 

#2: Delegate Scheduling Content

I have no problem with creating content, but scheduling content has been the problem. I am actually close to delegating this part. I have a Google Doc in place with set instructions for my blog posts. All I need to do now is finalize it and create a Google Doc for my podcast episodes.

This will be the easiest task to delegate, but I’ll need to boost my revenue with the extra time.

 

#3: Publish At Least 20 SkillShare Courses 

This is one of my strategies for boosting revenue based on what I previously discussed. I will give SkillShare a month to see if this is a revenue generating activity I should continue pursuing.

The eventual goal is to make thousands of dollars of passive income through SkillShare each month. Other creators have achieved this milestone and I believe I can get there as well.

Plus, I no longer find it difficult to start doing videos. It’s become much easier for me to create videos ever since I took SkillShare seriously again.

 

#4: Get At Least 10 Patrons

While I can’t say enough great things about being the host of the Breakthrough Success Podcast, it costs me over $1,000 each month to keep the show running and expenses continue to grow.

To provide you with a better experience, I don’t include any ads within my shows. The problem is that this requires me to sacrifice a lot of revenue. That’s why I’m asking you and the rest of my community for help.

I recently started a Patreon Page to ensure I can run the show and keep it ad free. If you want to help me reach my goal of 10 patrons for this month, please consider leaving a small contribution on my Patreon Page.

Even $1/mo makes a big difference, and if you’re one of the patrons before we reach $100/mo, I will audit your website and give you personal recommendations on how you can boost your traffic and conversions.

This is a goal that I can only achieve with your help. Please consider becoming a patron and asking others to help support the show.

 

#5: Hire A Coach

My research is done. I don’t have a list of five coaches or even a list of three coaches. I have a list with one coach and one coach only. This individual has coached several of the guests on my show and some of the top influencers in my niche.

I don’t want to say this individual’s name until I’ve officially hired him and we’re getting started, but I have one coach in mind.

The more successful I am with SkillShare and my other ventures, the earlier in the month I can hire him. This is something that I know needs to happen.

In Conclusion

I started off the year strong. I’ve acquired much knowledge, established some new habits, and am excited about what February brings. Hiring my coach will represent a big investment for my success, but I know it will be well worth it.

What were your thoughts on this month’s performance report? Do you have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.