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How to be 5% Awesome (and why the other 95% doesn’t matter)

I suck. This is not a new realization for me, but it’s something I find cathartic to admit publicly from time to time. Interestingly enough, sucking hasn’t proven to be much of a roadblock. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

If you want your blog marketing to become infinitely easier and more effective, I have some good news for you. Trust

me…if I can run a very profitable blog, you can too. You can probably do even better than me.

I suck

I’ve found that most of us simply make this blogging stuff way too complicated. I have a background in sales and 10 years of experience selling stuff both online and offline. If you want sales strategy or want to know how to get better results with a marketing campaign, I have that nailed down. I can help with that. For anything else, you better talk to someone else.

What do I suck at doing? Hmm, let’s see:

• I suck at telling awesome stories like Johnny B Truant does. I also don’t have nearly his skill at brandishing the F-word effectively. I really want to work on that.
• I am far from having the technical expertise of David Risley.
• When it comes to advanced SEO stuff you should definitely talk with Michael Martine, not me.
• Want to see the Wordpress theme I developed? No you don’t. Trust me. It sucks. Stick with Headway. Seriously.
• I don’t do video nearly as well as Laura Roeder. Nowhere close. She’s awesome. I’m not.
• My podcasts aren’t anywhere near as cool and innovative as what Nathan Hangen is doing these days.

I could make this list a lot longer, but in the interest of preserving some dignity (and saving you some time), I’ll stop there. I think you get the point.

Look at how much I suck, yet I still earn a good income from online marketing. What gives? If you want to know, read on…

You suck, too (probably)

You probably have some things you struggle with also, no? You look out there, trying to figure out how to get better results with your blogging, and you see people doing all sorts of things really well. You see the impressive results other bloggers are getting, and it’s easy to think you need to do what they do.

It’s so f*cking easy (I’m channeling Johnny B Truant…did you see that? I’m growing as a person!) to get sucked into someone else’s story. It’s so easy to be convinced that in order to be successful with your blog, you need to learn SEO, copyrighting, video production, HTML, CSS, PHP, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and the list goes on.

Do you really think it’s necessary to learn all this crap in order to be a profitable blogger? Or could it be true that things are actually a lot simpler than that?

The 95% that doesn’t matter

Again, I humbly submit that we just make this stuff way too hard. 95% of the stuff out there doesn’t matter nearly as much as you might think. All the systems. All the courses. All the ebooks. All the tutorials. All the “How I Got 8,000,000,000 subscribers in 2 Hours” posts…it’s all noise. It’s a good kind of noise, like Jimi Hendrix. It’s awesome and fun, but if you listen to it all the time you’ll end up going out of your mind!

If you’re blogging for fun, that’s one thing. But if you have a business to run, then you need to keep distractions to a minimum. You can’t get sucked into someone else’s story. Instead, tell your own story. Don’t discredit the unique value that you offer your niche. Sure, get your “Foxy Lady” on from time to time and get down with the noise. Learn something new. Expand your mind. Then shut off the noise and get to work! If you want a nice secret for success, I have something for you that I think you’re going to like.

The 5% that matters (and how to get it)

Here’s the key, and it’s what makes blogging so awesome. You are already 5% Awesome, and 5% Awesome is all you need. The 5% that matters more than anything else is what YOU bring to the table that no one else brings. To nail down your 5% Awesomeness, answer these 3 questions:

1. What is truly unique about you?
2. What can you do better than anyone else?
3. Who will truly benefit most from what you have to offer?

The answers to these admittedly difficult questions are the key to revealing the 5% Awesomeness which will catapult you to undeniable prominence (and profitability) in your niche.

If you’re struggling to get results with your online marketing, focus on those three questions. That’s your foundation. It’s amazing how far we’ll wander off the beaten path…trying to find the “trick” to blogging without first having really good answers to these basic questions. Most of us spend the majority of our time on the 95% that matters very little. Instead, flip it around…spend some REAL time on getting very clear about what you have to offer that no one else offers. Spend some REAL time on targeting the right people and engaging them authentically.

Success in blogging is not a matter of technical proficiency or having the right plugins or having the perfect page layouts or any of this noise we hear about from day to day. Success in blogging comes from harnessing the awesome, unique value you have to offer with the world and targeting the right people with it.

Show me any A-list blogger, and I’ll show you a whole list of things they could improve. Success doesn’t come from doing everything right. It comes from doing a FEW things right, and not letting other stuff get in the way. Know your niche, know the true value you offer your readers, and communicate that to them effectively…and regularly. Want to know how to explode your blog’s profitability? You just read it.

Is your blog going to have issues? Yes. Are you going to make lots of “mistakes”? Yes. Is your blog going to be filled with things can could be improved upon? Always. But don’t let the 95% distract you from the 5% that actually matters!

The 5% of stuff that you are already awesome at doing needs to shine through. When your readers connect with you on that level, all the other stuff doesn’t matter. After you’ve connected with your people on that level, you can expand your skill set if you want. It’s always smart to grow and learn new things, but you don’t need to master all this technical stuff in order to be a successful business blogger.

You can have the most optimized page layout in the world, but if you fail to connect emotionally with the reader, you got nothing. When the reader DOES see the value in what you have to share, do you think they may be willing to overlook the fact that you forgot to optimize the images in your last post with image alt text? I think your chances are good

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Published by: Grant Griffiths

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Full post as published by Blawg for Profit on November 17, 2010 (boomark / email).