“The One Skill All Internet Marketers Must Possess…” April 20, 2007
Posted by Andrew Wee in : Internet Marketing , trackbackI was thinking about SleepyBlogger Robyn Tippins‘ reply to our discussion whether onsite blogging provides value: “I find it so difficult to live-blog a session and actually pay attention to the speaker. Some are better at this I think.”
So the conversation seems to have shifted from whether “onsite blogging” provides value, to how difficult it is to “liveblog a session” because of the multiple tasks involved:
- Pay attention to the speaker
- Live blog the session
Here’s a secret I learned as a former journalist. I together with the reporters from the Reuters, Associated Press and Bloomberg news wires, sat listening to Microsoft, HP or some other company make their announcement, and we used our strategies, following that, we’d file our reports (the newswire guys generally filed their reports within 30 seconds to a minute to someone in the newsroom), the reports would go live.
Due to our ability to effectively process the information successfully, their reports would be circulated all over the world, and my news stories would make it to page one of Singapore’s business daily, or it’d make the front page of the tech session.
Compared to everyone else, we have the same brain, the same abilities, but yet we’re able to achieve different results.
So the question is:
What made the difference?
—
Before we get into that, consider all the tasks you have to get through every day.
You need to:
- Check and respond to email
- Collaborate with joint venture partners
- Develop your own products (or project manage if you’ve outsourced it)
- Update your blog or submit news articles/press releases
- Manage the sales team in following up and marketing your services
- The administrative stuff like filing paper, and probably the least exciting activity (at least for me…) filing your taxes
On top of that, we all only have 24 hours to finish this in.
So again: What makes the difference?
Your time planning and execution strategy you use make all the difference.
I won’t go into time planning, but focus on the execution aspect.
Many business owners and new entrepreneurs fail because:
- They fail to realize what’s important
- They fail to do what’s important
- They fail to follow up on what’s important
The Pareto principle states that 20% of the people in a city in Italy owned 80% of it’s wealth. Since then, the Vilfredo Pareto’s principle has been generalized to:
“20% of what you do will lead to 80% of your results” — So of the 10 things you do, you need to complete 2 of them to become really successful. The problem is that most people choose to do maybe 5 or 6 things.
Unfortunately, those 5 things happen to be part of the trivial 80%.
Fast forward to Internet Marketing, my opinion is that we’re closer to a 95-5 rule (It’s actually closer to a 90-9-1 rule, but I’ll save it for another day).
That 5% effort which gives you your 95% of results could be:
- Brokering a joint venture with the leader in a niche you’re targeting
- Landing media coverage in the most influential media for your specific segment
- Selecting the ONE seminar/convention out of hundreds held every year to be in the right place at the right time to meet the one partner/mentor/client who will help propel you to the next level of success.
Being able to sort out your priorities and more importantly, acting on them, will give you unfair leverage over all your competitors.
If you’re looking for one takeaway form this post, here’s one thing you can start doing now which will bring you phenomenal results. It’s a simple, two-step process.
Are you ready?
- Spend five minutes at the start of each day determining which one thing you must finish today which will bring you a giant step closer to your goals (It’s usually the ‘most difficult’ task, which has been pending for some time)
- Completing it to the best of your ability (Make a personal commitment to finish it before you go to sleep)
Want to see someone who’s put this into action? How about “PC Torque – $25 million in 4 years”
[And if you're interested in the live blogging strategy. Here's the answer:
- Spend time listening to the speakers at event. Take down keywords. Occasionally note down a phrase if you plan to quote them on it.
- Before you start writing, take one minute to summarize what you're going to say. Limit it to 3-5 points. Each point can be 1-2 sentences.
- Just do it.]
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I think there is also just the effect of doing something over and over that lets you do it better with less effort.
I would hope that the skills of running an online business will also come with practice. Would I be right?