Have You Been Making the Same Mistake as Me?

I started this blog about 9 months ago.  At the time, my stated goal was to help SMBs learn more about internet marketing, and thereby help them succeed in otherwise unfamiliar territory.  In the process, all I hoped for in return was some dialogue, and hopefully to learn from the process.  I think I may have half-succeeded.  If you were to aggregate and organize all of the posts on this blog to date, I think you would get a pretty decent – if somewhat disjointed and frenetic – book for SMB’s who want to learn how to market themselves online.

Where I failed was in what I hoped to get back for myself.  This blog has created some dialogue, but not as much as I would have hoped.  I know it’s not because no one’s reading it, because I have the analytics to prove that someone is reading.  So, I began to ask myself, why isn’t there more discussion going on here?  It’s not the quality of the writing.  I write elsewhere, and get quite a bit of discussion on my posts.  I also don’t think it’s the subject matter, because there is definitely plenty to be said on the topic of internet marketing.  So, what is it?

I’ve decided that the biggest reason that I have not generated as much discussion on this blog as I would have liked, is the audience.

Before you, dear reader, close this window in offense, allow me to explain. I’m not saying that my audience is ungrateful.  I’m not saying my audience is lazy.  I’m not saying my audience isn’t intelligent enough to have a discussion.  In fact, there is no blame to be placed on the audience at all. The blame is on me.

I blame myself because my goals were not aligned.  On the one hand, I hoped to educate small business owners.  On the other hand, I hoped to get challenging discussion back in return.  Small business owners were never going to take the time to read my blog, give the ideas in it a great deal of thought, and respond with some esoteric comment.  Small business owners are some of the busiest people on the planet.  If I was at all successful with some of my posts, they read the post, and immediately went to put the ideas into action. They didn’t philosophize over them!

If I wanted conceptual discussion about my industry, I was really writing the wrong articles all together.  As a case and point, some time ago, I wrote a post that was in no way advice to small business owners, but rather a commentary on the state of social media, and the prevalence of “experts” in the field.  I’m sure some small business owners may have read that with some passing interest, but none would argue that it was among my most useful posts.  However, that post generated comments and e-mail dialogue with Chris Brogan and Naomi Dunford, two people in the industry, whom I have incredible respect for.

Therefore, my biggest mistake with this blog was an error in the way I set out to achieve my goals. And I’m certain that there are many people blogging, tweeting, marketing out there, who are making the same mistakes.  So, before you spend anymore time and/or money, stop and ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve with the work you’re doing online.  Then, ask yourself if what you’re doing is really the best way to go about doing it.

In my case, the kinds of articles I was writing, probably would have been useful if my objective were to find clients for a consulting business.  However, I’m not a consultant. I work for a marketing company, and I don’t work in sales.  The only times I’ve ever consulted on the side, were on a pro bono basis (if you run a non-profit, feel free to drop me a line).  I don’t sell my services, so why am I running a blog as if I did?

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I have enjoyed every minute of writing this blog, and I appreciate each and every single one of my readers, and don’t expect any of them to do anything more than read these posts.

However, I do think it’s worthwhile rethinking who my target audience is, and what kind of stuff I should be writing to achieve my goals.  With that purpose in mind, I’ll be taking some time to rethink the direction of this blog.  There’s a good chance that at the end of that reflection, this blog will be much more “big picture,” and a lot less “nuts and bolts.”

Until then, I encourage anyone operating online to do the same. Rethink what your goals are and evaluate if you’re really going about accomplishing them in the right way.  Don’t just keep doing what you’re doing because it’s what you do.