Marc's Blog

Content Writing and Marketing Services

business

Ignore The Trends

by Leave a Comment

Look at the trends on Twitter right now and write them down. They can be found on the left hand corner under the “Who To Follow” section. Don’t look at what you wrote down. After a week, see if you can remember any of those trends.

Chances are you won’t remember a majority of those trends. The newest trend becomes an old trend in a matter of hours, and rarely, days. Most of the trends you remember today will be forgotten by the end of the week.

When you talk about the trend, you will get a lot of traffic. Talking about the trends doesn’t even guarantee more traffic or followers. If you talk about that trend on a normal basis, then be a part of that trend. It relates to what you are talking about. If you talk about sports, and one of the trends is about a sports team, feel free to talk about the trend.

Some trends are good. These trends will be unforgettable, or they relate to what you already talk about. However, a majority of trends go from new to old faster than the sun goes down and comes back up.

Don’t focus on trends because there are a lot of people who talk about the trends. Your content will be mixed into the thousands of other people who are talking about the trend. Then that trend simply gets replaced by another trend.

The Wonka Decision

by Leave a Comment

Charlie Bucket ends up winning the competition, and his house is moved to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. However, there were many people who wanted to be in Charlie’s position. Here’s how Wonka ended up choosing Charlie as the winner.

The first thing Wonka did was to hide the golden tickets in bars. There were only 5 tickets, and the five people who found those tickets were Charlie Bucket, Veruca Salt, Mike Teavee, Violet Beauregarde, and Augustus Gloop. Charlie was the mot deserving out of the five because Charlie had proper manners. The other 4 had flaws. When you are making decisions between who to include in your business plan, do what Wonka did.

Augustus Gloop’s downfall was his eating habits. He was a greedy eater, and he ate everything in sight. When he saw the chocolate river, he knew he needed to eat some of the chocolate. He keeps on eating the chocolate and ends up falling into the river. He continues eating the chocolate, but then he gets sucked through a pipe where he ends up in the Fudge Room.

Augustus Gloop’s greed led to his demise. If he won, he could have had all of the chocolate he wanted. His greed made him want the chocolate right then and there. The chocolate river looked really good, but Augustus had it too early.

Veruca Salt was a daughter of a rich family which naturally made her spoiled. If she saw something she liked, she would say, “I want it now!”

Hearing that the first time is annoying enough. Constantly hearing about it for a long time is. It all ended when she demanded her father to buy her one of Wonka’s trained squirrels. When she approaches the squirrel, the squirrel says Veruca is a “bad nut” and  sends her down the garbage chute. Her father endures the same fate. She still wants more. Covered in garbage, Veruca looks at the glass elevator and asks her father for one. That was when her father lost his mind.

Veruca was a spoiled girl who wouldn’t be grateful no matter what she was given. If she won the competition and ended up being given the chocolate factory, she would have wanted more. More is good, but it is better to be grateful for what we have.

Violet Beauregarde’s problem wasn’t that she ate too much. It was the opposite. She was an athlete which is good, but she kept on talking about herself. She was competitive, and one of the things she did was chew gum. She bragged about how she chewed the same piece of gum for 3 months. During the tour, she sees some gum, and she chews the gum against Wonka’s wishes. Violet ends up growing into a superhuman blueberry and weighed over 1 ton.

Violet’s big ego resulted her turning into a superhuman blueberry (doesn’t get bigger than that). She ends up going back to normal size. No one wants to hear someone talk about themselves all the time, and Wonka couldn’t agree more.

Mike Teavee was a bad-tempered boy who commented on everything involving Wonka’s ‘absurdness’ and points out the flaws of the chocolate factory. The only thing Mike cares about is television. He primarily went to the chocolate factory to see the chocolate television room. While trying to film himself, he shrinks himself to a few inches tall. He is small enough for his father to slip him into a pocket.

Mike Teavee was smarter than the other children who didn’t make it, but he only looked at the flaws. He saw areas where the chocolate factory could improve instead of how amazing the place was. He also went to the chocolate factory for the wrong reason. If he won the contest, the entire chocolate factory would have been his.

Just like Augustus Gloop, he saw something and couldn’t stay away, the chocolate television room. Then he shrank himself. He was definitely small enough to know if there was any dust on Wonka’s floor.

Make decisions like Wonka, and then you will be able to choose the benefactors instead of the malefactors.

The Wishing Well Is A Trap

by Leave a Comment

Success is not something easy to achieve. If it were easy to achieve, no one would be talking about it because it would be ordinary. Success is anything but ordinary. People wish that success will find them.

Wish upon a star, then wish upon another star, and then which upon all of the stars you see. A couple of wishes later, you said what you wanted, but did you take action? Did you get closer to turning that wish into a reality?

The wishing well is a place where you make wishes. More coins get put in depending on the wish. You’re giving away money in hopes that your wish comes true. In fact, no one’s wish can come true without taking action.

The wishing well is an idea that as you pay, you are more likely to make your wish come true. Then you start to learn trick shots and make putting coins into a wish well entertaining.

The fact that the wishing well is a place to wish for your dreams to come true isn’t why the wishing well is a trap. It’s a trap because when we wish for something, people believe they will get what they want. When people believe they will get what they want, no action will be taken.

Stop putting coins into the wishing well and start putting coins into your future by taking action.

The Bad, The Worse, And The Ugly

by Leave a Comment

The Bad: Something is wrong.

The Worse: Something is wrong and people know it.

The Ugly: Something is wrong, people know about it, and no action is being taken.

Polish your content so that none of it is bad. This prevents things from getting worse, and for some people, just getting ugly. Take action when you see a mistake, and don’t let a mistake stay up for long.

I created a blog post called “Everyone Notices Messinesss” (there is an extra s at the end of messiness). One of my friends looked at the title and told me, “You spelled that word wrong.”

Once my friend read the content, he realized the typo was intentional. People notice when something is wrong. We could have read 500 pages in a book and enjoyed every word. Then, on page 501, there is a typo that we stare at for a few seconds. Nevermind the 500 pages. What about page 501? Everyone notices the smallest mistakes.

A similar spell check can save a lot of frustration. Nothing needs to get bad, worse, or ugly.

 

Shiny Objects Lose Their Shine

by Leave a Comment

Don’t fall into the shiny trap. The cars in the commercials are new and shiny. Most of them look better than the average person’s car. The average person’s car is going to have some dirt on it. You can’t avoid all of the puddles, rain drops, mud, and gravel when you are driving with your car. New becomes old very fast.

Remember when one of the car dealerships did a commercial for their newest car back in 2012 or even earlier? You may see the ones for 2013 and 2014. Remember those commercials, and then when 2015 comes, remember how shiny the cars from 2013 and 2014 looked. In 2015, there will probably be a car commercial for the 2016 car.

My Mac Book Pro was in the box when I got it. The keyboard was untouched and so was everything else. It’s not in horrible condition, but you can see that it has been used. I still use it every day, and I am still happy with the product. I don’t need to buy another computer until the one I am using breaks.

When we make choices to buy something, that something we buy will lose its shine. Make sure you can use it and you’re not just getting it because it’s popular, new, and shiny. Within a few years, what is popular, new, and shiny now will most likely be unpopular, old, and dull.

Broke The Baseball Bat? Don’t Blame The Manufacturer

by Leave a Comment

It is tempting to blame the manufacturer if the wooden baseball bat breaks after three months. Ask for the refund, complain to the manufacturer, but in the end, the baseball bat was broken because it was used.

Basball bats do break. Some break faster than others. It’s not the manufacturer’s fault that you used the baseball bat too many times. Just get a new one and move on. You got what you wanted, and you used it until it broke.

No one would come up to the manufacturer is they dropped a glass vase. When that falls, it shatters. There’s no reason to blame the manufacturer. That’s the risk of getting a glass vase. Drop it, and you’ll have to get a new one.

Baseball bats don’t break like glass vases, but they do break. Why blame the manufacturer when you can just buy another bat. Better yet, buy two. You might need an extra bat.