Whenever someone pours time and energy into a business, blog, product, project, etc their is a chance something will go ‘Red’. ‘Red’, meaning something is broken.

It could be a new marketing strategy you just implemented, an investment you just purchased, or a business’ finances operating in the negative. Ideas turn sour, things go wrong and you’re left with a mess.

The tendency for most, is to simply blame it on some external factor: economy, customers, oil prices, competitors, you name it. Or, just simply throw up there hands in frustration and give up.

Of course one of the most obvious reasons for not wanting to label something as Red, is nobody likes to admit they screwed up. But, as we all know, settling for something that is Red or mediocre at best is no way to be successful. After all, recognition of failure is a vital component in growth.

It’s Red for a reason

The concept of Red can apply to just about anything:

• Projects fail
• Marketing strategy flops
• Demand for a new product is non-existent
• 65% on a test
• Relationships damaged.
• Low traffic to your blog or website
• Spam
• Being overweight
• Etc…

Of course, making the Red go away isn’t always easy. In fact, sometimes it can be quite costly; perhaps ones reputation, career, or life. However, recognizing that it exists and does so for a reason, is the first step in finding a solution to the problem.

I realize this isn’t anything new, but for some reason I felt compelled to put it in writing. It’s just too easy to pass things by that are broken and label them as orange (semi-broken) or yellow (good enough) at best, and convince ourselves that all is well. For me, knowing that something is Red, for a reason, emphasizes its brokenness and shows me the need to fix it.

What do you see as being Red in the Blogosphere, Business, Marketing? Is it Red for a reason?

1 comment

Business, Marketing, Blogging - it all seems so forced sometimes. The push/pull mentality that often surrounds these services is what ends up being corrosive. Why is it that we tend to look for the benefit of the transaction, instead of the joy in making a contribution? I’ve talked about attention and the effect it can have on economics. But is attention what we really ought to be seeking after? What is the benefit for the one giving the attention? Is there a benefit?

Most would say it’s our instinct to look out for ourselves first, make sure we are taken care of, receive something for our efforts. But do we actually gain anything by forcing others to listen to us? Would the intention of serving others perhaps fulfill the original desire of ‘receiving’ something for our efforts? There is a lot of concern as to whether the US market economy is unstable and tipsy at best, but what about the Gift Economy? Granted, the market economy is important and does have a close tie with our lifestyle, career, and security but where does the Gift Economy come into play? Does it matter?

The Gift Economy holds together the most vital characteristic of society - Love. Without love everything else falls apart. The market economy could be at its peak, but without the steady heartbeat of the Gift Economy, money holds no value, trust doesn’t exist, security is worthless, and freedom is useless.

What would happen if we took a different approach? What if we changed our strategy? What if we cared more about the customer than ourselves? What if we truly wanted to serve instead of take? Would we be setting ourselves up entirely, at the mercy of those “devouring” our precious gifts? Yes, probably. But who would win? For me, it all comes down to what constitutes winning. When the dust settles, what prize matters most? Is it money, popularity, knowledge, power? All of these are natural acquisitions when participating in the Gift Economy, but no that’s not really what I care about. I care about loving others well. And the only way to successfully accomplish this is to be part of the Gift Economy.

Are you participating in the Gift Economy? What are your thoughts on the Gift Economy and its effect on Business, Marketing, Blogging, etc?

4 comments

I found an article over at Write to Done called “Write Just One Thing Today, and Write It Well”. It really hit home with me, not just with writing but with doing anything.

Here’s the theory: Focusing on one particular thing, minimizes distraction and directs attention, allowing one to pour all of their energy into the completion of a task. All of the non-important stuff fades into the background, stress vanishes, mind is clear, and simplicity arrives.

This is great and all, but is it practical? Especially when juggling several things at once?

4 comments

I just learned the other day that WordPress, by default, attaches a ‘NoFollow’ tag to all homepage links added by readers in comments. This acts as a deterrent for spammers abusing a blog’s commenting features, trying to gather a bunch of inbound links to increase pagerank.

Although I do agree that spammers shouldn’t benefit from this sort of behavior, it takes away link love from the everyday reader involved in discussions.

So, I decided to install the Lucia’s Linky Love WordPress plugin and will now be allowing DoFollow on links for regular commenter’s. I may receive some additional spam related comments, but I think it’s worth the risk. Plus, I’m using the Akismet plugin so I’m not too worried.

I have also joined the No Nofollow | I Follow | DoFollow Community in hopes of encouraging the DoFollow movement.

UPDATE: I added the following image to the comment section as a reminder of the DoFollow advantages of participating in discussion.

2 comments

Being a relatively new needle in the blogosphere haystack, I often find myself up against a tremendous amount of pressure to publish something appealing to the masses. It seems as though the “best” way to stand out and receive attention/traffic is by creating provocative content, mastering SEO, and flooding social networking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon with propaganda. There are way to many posts IMHO that encourage this behavior. For example, how many times have you run across a post saying something like this: “How I made it to the front page of Digg”, or “10 effective link building techniques”. Attention grabbers? You bet, wouldn’t it be great if we could all just get the attention we deserve? But do we really deserve the attention?

When we put too much emphasis on these tools and strategies, we are not only assuming we deserve the attention of the masses but we are ignoring the power of the individual. The power to choose, the power to engage, and the power to influence others.

By creating and promoting content for the mass phenomena, we’re becoming more and more invisible to our primary readers. The fact of the matter is, not everyone is part of the “masses” category. Seth does an excellent job of explaining this here.

Attention and more importantly, interaction with your audience, isn’t established by making it to the front page of Digg or blending in with the masses. Building a permission based asset and developing a respect among your readers is a much more effective way of establishing a long-term conversation.

I don’t think we can, or should, totally ignore the advantages of using tools like social networks or link building techniques, but unless we have something of value to offer our readers, the traffic/attention goes to waste and the reader is left with an empty and false perception of what we have to offer. I think we need to reevaluate what our primary focus should be as publishers. Is it our goal to entice readers grouped in the “masses” category in order to receive lots of attention? Or should we be concentrated and focused on starting a conversation, with an individual, exchanging value and developing a relationship?

What are your thoughts?

2 comments

I ran across this sweet online tool called Pingie for staying updated on your favorite RSS feeds via SMS messages. It provides a simple, easy to use, interface for managing RSS feeds of your choice and is totally free. Pingie is currently in beta so there may be a few glitches, but so far it has been working smoothly for me.

Oh, and if you would like to receive Pingie SMS messages via RSS for this blog click here.

No comments

Sometimes the most simplistic concepts can be hard to understand. For example, linking a WordPress Page to a custom PHP file should be relatively straight forward, however if one overlooks a few small steps along the way it can be extremely frustrating locating the source of the problem.

Why would anyone want to do this?

This allows us to use the infrastructure provided by WordPress while using a totally custom PHP file. By doing so, we can take full advantage of our custom PHP file while using the current theme inside WordPress. This is especially helpful when integrating an existing website with a blog created by WordPress.

Let’s say we want to create a WordPress Page in WordPress called “Archives” and link this new Page to a custom PHP file with code to display an archived list of our posts.

1. Create PHP File and Edit Template Name

Create a file called “archives.php” and open it up with your favorite text editor. Insert the following snippet of code in the top of your file.

<?php
/*
Template Name: Archives
*/
?>

This tells WordPress that this file is a “Template” and is named “Archives”. It is absolutely crucial that this be included in our archives.php file so WordPress can pick it up and use it accordingly.

In order for our archives.php file to actually do anything we would need to tack on a bit more code that would create a list of archived posts. There are several ways to do this but for starters here is a link that explains it a bit more in detail.

2. Upload PHP File to Server

We will need to locate the file directory containing our current WordPress Theme.

Example: blog/wp-content/themes/current-theme

This directory will contain all of the custom files associated with your WordPress theme.

Upload the “archives.php” file into your theme directory via an FTP server or whatever you use to upload files to your server.

3. Create a WordPress Page

Log into your WordPress admin interface and click on the “Manage” tab and the “Pages” tab respectively. Create a new Page and enter “Archives” in the Page Title field. Leave the main body text area blank. In the right column, find the “Page Template” box and select the “Archives” option from the drop down and click the “Save” button.

4. Take a Look

Now, go to the page you just created using your browser. The URL will be something like this: http://www.yoursite.com/blog/Archives

You have now successfully linked a WordPress Page with a custom PHP file using your current theme. Well Done!

1 comment