IZEAFest Keynote: Merlin Mann
September 16
Merlin Mann’s How to Blog keynote presentation in Orlando, FL at IZEAFest covered material he learned over the last four years related to blogging.
- Just cause it’s easy to post, doesn’t mean you should.
- What’s a blog? Topic multiplied by voice.
- It’s hard to have a blog that’s all voice.
- And it’s hard a blog about all about a topic.
- You have to find the axis where you find a voice and your topic.
- Find out what place the blog has in your life.
- You want to have a blog to genereate a huge amount of traffic and/or money.
- It’s not the only reason.
- It means a lot to say things that are meaningful.
- If a blog is to get traffic, this talk isn’t for you.
- My concern:
- I was worried that I wasn’t good fit for the conference.
- I can’t abuse my blog.
- It’s good idea to make money to blogs, but it’s not a high success rate
- We all wanna get better.
- Speak an authentic manner.
- Here’s you.
- There is something you are obsessed about.
- Think of the first axis is your passion.
- A blog is can be a set of links or you can bring original content to the Web.
- Let’s say you want money, success, recognition.
- One of the greatest honors is to have readers say “I wonder what you think about?”
- You don’t want to be liked, but you want to be known.
- Trying:
- Share Passion.
- Build Participation.
- Generate Money.
- Earn Respect.
- Encourage Opinion.
- Get Better.
- When you try a lot, it means a lot.
- Trying also has business value.
- I don’t link to sites that are dumb.
- If you over-serve the right audience, and you are bound to do well.
- What I know about blogging:
- “Find your obsession. Every day, explain it to one person you respect. Edit everything, skip shortcuts, and try not to be a dick. Get better.”
- “Find your obsession.”
- Hit them from where there ain’t.
- Is there room for another site that reviews Social Media 2.0? Probably not.
- “Every day,”
- I didn’t say post everyday.
- If you want to be good everyday, you need to do it everyday.
- I don’t think you need to post everything that occurs to you.
- It’s okay to sit on posts on a while.
- Have about five posts going at once.
- When you give your brain permission to get better, you want to do it better.
- “explain it”
- What is it that you have to say about that topic?
- Ann Coulter can be talking about anything, people will seek her out cause they love being angry at Ann Coulter.
- There is tons of content out there with ads around it, but why should people be excited about it.
- If you were going to start a new blog, then write the fifth blog post.
- “to one person”
- Recommends Stephen King book’s On Writing. It’s the second best book on creative writing. (The Creative Habit is the other book.)
- Think of one person you are writing to that you really admire and write to that person.
- Imagine that person be really busy.
- “you respect.”
- It helps that the person you are writing for is someone you respect.
- “Edit everything,”
- At some point editing fell out of style.
- Getting rid of things that sucked become a waste of time at some point.
- You should be throwing away a lot of what you make.
- If the people are you reaching don’t care that you edit, are they people you want in your audience?
- “skip shortcuts,”
- The Internet is a thing that works because it’s open. Openness makes it good.
- You need to show people where you were initially interested in what you are talking about.
- The Internet is good.
- “and try not to be a dick.”
- There’s a very short link between cognition and action.
- If you are constantly reacting to your emotions, you might regret a lot of things in your life.
- If you use your platform to spit on it, it’s not very respectful.
- “Get better.”
- I try a little bit harder each time I do something.
- Low quality work is like a potato chip. it tastes good, but it’s short term benefits hurts people who work out.
- You only get so many years on the marble.
- Things Not to Sweat:
- Don’t worry about SEO.
- Traffic. It will come if you are good.
- Ads.
- Design.
- Fame.
- Things to Sweat. Now.
- Figure out what the Why am I doing this? Who do I want to overserve? When do you know when you are doing well? How?
- Good idea: to write, read, obsess and own your voice.
- What is the single most important thing that you and no one else can do, but you?
- It took me four years to figure out.
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