You’re fired up. You’ve carved out some time to sit down and create some really engaging content. You’re going to build that audience. You’re going to increase that follower count.
The social media world is your oyster.
Carpe diem.
Game on!
(insert sound of screeching brakes, maybe a crash as the car hits a brick wall… the wall of writer’s block)
Blank stares at the screen will not help you pay for that trip to the mountains you’re working toward! You know you’ve got to get something out there and it’s not like you don’t have any ideas.
It’s just that every time you think of a great idea to talk about you realize you’ve already talked about that! You don’t want to be repetitive.
Here’s what you need to know about blogging:
Repetition is your friend.
Let’s play a little game. I’ll name a few well known publications. You see if you can think about what they’re talking about.
- Better Homes & Gardens
- Coastal Living
- Cosmo
- Oprah
You know exactly what they’re talking about! I’d list it, but by the time we get to Cosmo I’d have to put a non-family-friendly rating on the blog, so…
The point is that these publications and the people behind them have made themselves into household names by being repetitive.
Are there really five million ways to redecorate a kitchen?
I know that male/female relationships are pretty complex, but complex enough for 20 plus years of articles that cover completely different ideas?
I don’t think so!
They talk about the same thing. Over, and over, and over again.
And you love them for it! You love them because those ideas and those subjects are what you care about. You know when you read an article called 50 ways to do ________ to _______ in _________, that you probably already get most of it.
But maybe there is one idea in there you can use. And reading about the ones you already know about is fun anyway. It reminds you of what you already thought was important.
It keeps you focused on what you love. What you care about. What makes you tick.
So don’t reinvent the wheel!
Focus your social activity at your favorite channel(s) on a relatively small niche. If you make custom shoes for babies you might have a hard sell building a following to a baby shoes blog.
But a parenting blog? A kids fashion blog? A relationships blog?
Any subject that fits your target market and is large enough that you can reasonably expect to get at least a thousand people a day to your site(s).
And if you don’t like blogs, don’t let that cause you a hang-up. Subsitute whatever…
YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and more are all ways to build a following. Personally I think the smart bet is a blog first and then expand from there to whatever else fits, but you get to decide.
The point is that you need to build a following. In order to do that… be repetitive.
Offer unique angles on your ideas, but stay focused and say them over, and over, and over again.
That’s how you become an expert in your niche.
Repetition is a key to learning.
We all know this but it’s worth, um, repeating. Giant heaps of study data exist to support the idea that repetition helps us learn.
Duh.
What isn’t quite as well known is the idea of “spaced repetition”. There is an interesting article on Wikipedia about this concept. It even tells you what the optimum spacing is for learning something new.
5 seconds, 25 seconds, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours, 1 day, 5 days, 25 days, 4 months, and 2 years.
I don’t know about you, but this kind of strikes a chord with me. It sounds right. You or I should develop an automatic email that delivers a message on this exact timetable.
Exact timetables aside, repetition is key. So next time all you can think of is stuff you’ve already covered, remember this post and cover it again!
Further Reading:
How Your Prospect’s Brain Becomes Your Secret Persuasion Partner at Copyblogger
Spaced Repetition at Wikipedia
(the above links open in a new window, so you can still share your thoughts and experience with repetition in the comments below!)
Let’s talk about it. Do you embrace or avoid repetition? What kind of content would you most like us to repeat frequently here at Etsypreneur?
I’m looking forward to your comments!
- Tim
original photo credit: left-hand on flickr
I really struggle with ‘to do or not to do the re-do’ for fear of redundancy…clearly the big Guys and Girls do not suffer the same. Maybe the real issue for me is that I have not quite found my blog’s voice. I thought it was going to be about sharing my pitfalls and promises of beginning a small biz…then I kind of segued to tutorials to share new things I had learned…now I seem to sharing sales experiences….I think I need a compass! However OK, so I’m going to process via post here: You mention, “Any subject that fits your target market and is large enough that you can reasonably expect to get at least a thousand people a day to your site(s).” I’ve been married for 39 years and since my product is about positive communication, that should be my focus…On the other hand, I have traffic safety injury prevention expertise that I really love to share with people because ‘when people are given facts and tools to work with, they largely decide to improve driving behaviors’. I feel like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, “but…..on the other hand.”
PS: I would love a post about the value of creating a ‘circle of friends’ and how to use Google+ expertly, correctly, what it does, doesn’t etc. Thanks!