Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:10

Okay. Let's do this. Hello, bootstrappers. Welcome to Bootstrapped Web, the show for business owners like you and me who believe that to get to where we're going, we've got to learn by doing. I'm Brian Casel.

Brian Casel: 00:21

You can follow me on Twitter at castjam or on my blog at castjam.com. The five tool player is a professional baseball scout's dream ball player. They're the players who excel at all five of the key aspects of the game. Hitting for power, hitting for average, throwing, fielding, and base running. I've always been fascinated by watching professional athletes perform, particularly in the game of baseball.

Brian Casel: 00:51

I find it inspiring. Not because I dream of playing center field for the New York Mets during my lifetime. I gave up on that dream by the age of 10. But, you know, it's inspiring to me because these guys are the best of the best. They've got their skills completely dialed in.

Brian Casel: 01:08

They make it look so easy, and most of what they do does come easy to them. But even at the pinnacle of their success, they're still out there hustling, working on their game, hitting the gym, getting the batting practice in, analyzing videotape, and on and on. That hunger to continuously up your game and raise the bar, that's what inspires me. It fires me up every time I settle into watching a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden. And it motivates me when I'm talking to other entrepreneurs who are making it happen in their business.

Brian Casel: 01:42

And so that's what I kind of wanna talk about today, and that's about upping my blogging game. So over the last few weeks, I've been making a conscious effort to become a better blogger and really putting a lot of work into my blog here on castjam.com. Blogging isn't a particularly new exercise for me. I mean, I've been blogging for years now. But I feel I haven't raised my blogging game to the point where it kind of breaks away from the pack.

Brian Casel: 02:15

That point where real traction takes hold and things start to snowball. And I think there are a few key qualities that the great bloggers do extremely well, which most of the rest of us fail to do or or just don't do consistently enough. And that's the topic for today, how to become a five tool blogger. So these are the five things that I think will help you and me, take our blogging game to the next level. Let's do this.

Brian Casel: 02:49

Alright. Blogging tool number one, planned execution. Most people who are new to blogging basically write whenever they feel inspired and and they hit publish as soon as they type the last word of the post. But but the pros do things a little bit differently. They plan out their content in advance, and they execute a content strategy for their blog.

Brian Casel: 03:11

So here's what I mean. They keep a running list of ideas for blog posts. You know, then then they set aside time to give some serious thought as to which ideas will resonate most with their audience. And they keep an editorial calendar and schedule the post to publish at the optimal times. You know, like, don't I mean, most of the time, it's not a it's not a really good idea to publish something Sunday morning.

Brian Casel: 03:37

It might be a better idea to wait till Monday or Tuesday morning, depending on your audience. The five tool blogger also produces most of their content ahead of time so that they're never under the gun of a looming deadline. And and that could be really effective for for podcasters. So have have you guys heard of John Lee Dumas' podcast, Entrepreneur on Fire? He's publishing a new podcast episode every single day, seven days a week.

Brian Casel: 04:06

I mean, it's I mean, it's just craziness. You know, do do you think he records and edits all of his episode? Do you think he records and edits an episode every day? No. He records all all seven episodes on a Monday and then schedules them to publish for the upcoming week.

Brian Casel: 04:26

David Siteman Garland calls this getting off the content treadmill, and I'm linking to these in the post for this episode today. So David Siteman Garland of Rise to the Top, he records a month's worth of Rise to the Top episodes, and then he drips them out over time. So, you know, it's just a really it's a better way to really plan and and think and strategize around your content ahead of time, and and then execute it, you know, all in one shot, and then you kinda you're not under the gun. You're not on that content treadmill. You let it drip out over time, and then you can kind of focus all that extra time on other things like promoting and marketing and getting out there.

Brian Casel: 05:11

All right, blogging tool number two, a strong newsletter. The best bloggers know that having an awesome blog isn't only about your website. It's just as much, if not more, about having an awesome email newsletter. And I don't mean just placing a Mailchimp subscribe box in the sidebar of your blog and then calling it a day. That's basically the step where where most people stop, but the pros are just beginning.

Brian Casel: 05:37

The five tool blogger puts as much effort into his or her newsletter as they do their blog. They thoughtfully craft an email and send it to their list every single week. So they're setting up autoresponder sequences, and they're carefully planning them out with high value content. And they get personal in their email newsletters. They let their subscribers know that they're a real human being writing a real message, and and then they ask for a reply.

Brian Casel: 06:10

So even the guys with several thousand people on their newsletter list, they engage in genuine email conversations with their subscribers. And that brings me to tool number three. Blogging tool number three is behind the scenes relationships. So the blogger who is on their a game doesn't stop working once the post is published or once that email newsletter is blasted out. They're engaged in relationships behind the scenes, continuing to provide value above and beyond what they've already provided in their blog articles.

Brian Casel: 06:44

So when you're putting out lots of content that resonates with an audience, you'll inevitably receive emails from your readers. They're gonna ask questions, share their own stories, or tell you what they're working on. I even use an email autoresponder to ask my newsletter subscribers to reply to me and tell me what's challenging them right now in their business. And then I set aside time each week to reply to every response, sharing whatever knowledge I can to help them with whatever they're working Maybe it's just a link that I read today, or maybe I experienced some of the same issues that they're bringing up, even if I just experienced them recently. So I can kind of share how I worked through it, and maybe it could help.

Brian Casel: 07:30

Building relationships with readers happens just as much in your public facing blog posts and the comments as it does behind the scenes over email, at the conferences, at meetups, at your local coffee shop. So and as much as it's about giving insane amounts of value and time to your audience, the benefit goes both ways. So you, as the blogger, to learn exactly what's on the minds of your readers. You can use that information to help you decide what to write about next. I learned a ton about building a newsletter and interacting with subscribers during my interview with Brennan Dunn a few weeks ago.

Brian Casel: 08:13

Alright. So blogging tool number four, education and value. The best bloggers know that it's not about what's in it for them, it's about what's in it for the reader. They are completely mindful of what their audience is after. Most of the time their audience wants to learn something or better themselves in some or or in their work in in some way.

Brian Casel: 08:35

The five tool blogger knows that their reader is always thinking, what's in it for me? So so they deliver the goods every time. And that's where the social and viral aspect really comes into play here. When you're truly delivering something of value to your readers and they recognize that, then they are much more likely to share your content with their audience. When someone chooses to click that tweet button on your content, they know that it's as much a reflection of their own reputation with their followers as it is a reflection on your reputation as the blogger.

Brian Casel: 09:10

So make your reader's decision whether or not to share your content a no brainer by constantly giving them something of value. One of the key takeaways from my interview with Nathan Barry a few weeks ago was that it only took him a few in-depth He only put out a few in-depth educational tutorials to gain traction and help him build a solid email list, which eventually helped his first book become a really big success. And finally, blogging tool number five, killer writing chops. So the fifth key quality of the five tool blogger is to hone some killer writing chops. What I mean by that is it's not about picking the right topic and It's not just about picking the right topic and publishing something educational.

Brian Casel: 10:02

You have to make it interesting. You have to keep your readers hooked on every word. You have to develop a connection with your reader. And to do this, you have to develop your voice as a writer, your own style, your person your your persona as a writer. Yes, I think it's important that your own personality shines through in your writing, but you have to learn how to actually do that you're writing out words, paragraphs, headlines, transitions, and so on.

Brian Casel: 10:32

And I think the way that each of us learns how to write and improve our chops is different for each person. I think it comes down to two things, reading a lot and writing a lot. The more we read, the more we're exposed to different writing styles. And I don't just mean reading other blogs in your niche. Try and try and make a point of reading books, magazines, websites across all different subject areas.

Brian Casel: 10:58

I admit, this is definitely something that I'm trying to work on. I tend to stick mostly to the business and startup blogs, but I plan to do more reading elsewhere. I heard great things about this biography of George Washington, so I think I'll be picking that up pretty soon. That's kind of something that I wouldn't normally read. And of course, you have to constantly be writing.

Brian Casel: 11:22

That's the other half of this. We hear again and again that the key to becoming a better writer is to write something every single day. And it's true. I mean, I I firmly believe that writing is a muscle, and the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. When a young comic asked Jerry Seinfeld for his advice on how to become a better comic, Seinfeld said that the way to become a better comic was to create better jokes.

Brian Casel: 11:48

And the way to create better jokes was to write every single day. So if you wanna become a better writer on your blog, make a habit of writing something every day. Now here's a little tip about that. You don't need to write something for your blog every day. In fact, you you probably shouldn't.

Brian Casel: 12:05

Only your very best stuff should be scheduled to publish on your blog. But you should still write something every day. I recently started a habit of journaling. I started using the Day One app, which is an app for iOS and Mac. It's designed to keep a private journal.

Brian Casel: 12:23

So I'm trying to write down things that I'm thinking about, mostly related to my business, at least once or twice a day. And this is so this is like really informal, a totally personal approach to writing, and there's no editing involved. I almost never hit the backspace key when I'm writing my journal. Because editing doesn't matter, because I'm the only one who will ever read it. But journaling, I'm finding, is a really great way to hone that skill of just pouring words out onto the screen nonstop.

Brian Casel: 12:59

But now when it comes to publishing content for the world to see, on your blog or elsewhere, editing is crucial. In fact, part of becoming a great writer is becoming an even better editor. A few years back, Jason Free described a a course that that he would like to teach someday, And it's all about the skill of editing. And here's how here's how Jason Fried describes it. Every assignment would be delivered in five versions, a three page version, a one page version, a three paragraph version, a one paragraph version, and a one sentence version.

Brian Casel: 13:39

I don't care about the topic, I care about the editing. I care about the constant refinement and compression. I care about taking three pages and turning it into one page, then from one page into three paragraphs, then from three paragraphs into one paragraph, and finally one paragraph into one perfectly distilled sentence. Along the way, you'd trade detail for brevity, hopefully adding clarity at each point. This is important because I believe editing is an essential skill that is often overlooked and underappreciated.

Brian Casel: 14:10

The future belongs to the best editors. So that's what I think takes to so all of that, I think that's what it takes to become a five tool blogger, and I certainly have a lot of work to do if I'm gonna get there. But that's what this game is all about. Keep doing it, and and then do it again. And learn by doing.

Brian Casel: 14:38

So that that wraps up today's show. It was kinda short. It it was a bit of a different format today, but I will be doing more interviews with other entrepreneurs and mixing it up with some solo shows like today's episode. So by the way, how am I doing? I want to know what you guys think about this podcast.

Brian Casel: 14:57

So please shoot me an email, a tweet, or whatever, and let me know what you like, what you don't like, what you wanna hear more of, or just say, hey. All right, so tune in next Monday and every Monday for another episode of Bootstrapped Web. And if you're looking for more ideas and lessons on bootstrapping a a business from the ground up, be sure to head over to castjam dot com, enter your email address, and you'll get my weekly newsletter. Thanks for tuning in.