When you’re an expert your knowledge on a subject is nuanced, wide-ranging and inclusive. You can combine multiple high-level concepts into even higher concepts; you include knowledge from so many fields and draw so many valid and useful conclusions. You can explain a half-dozen related but different techniques and viewpoints.

Resist this temptation. When you write an article, it should only make one point.

It’s easier to act on one idea

An article is only useful if it makes something happen to its readers.

• It changes their opinion
• It gets them to take action
• It encourages them to consider new options
• It makes some new technique less intimidating
• It gets them to buy

If you focus on one concept you have a much better chance of creating that change. Of writing something that makes a difference. There is no better feeling as a writer than to get a comment saying, “You’re right, I’m going to go do that now!”

It’s easier to remember one idea

If you include too many ideas then they’ll be lost in the crowd. It becomes a random chance on what the reader will remember, with the good money betting on “Nothing”.

It’s easier to write about one idea

1. You make a statement about your idea.
2. You prove your position.
3. You explain action to take if you agree with the idea.

Sound familiar? It’s the format I use for these posts. It’s a simple and effective structure that is delightfully easy to use: if you’re writing about concepts you know well, all you need is the initial idea and the rest just… flows out.

Google, Google, always Google

No-one searches for “a whole lot of jumbled thoughts about hedges”. They search for “Should I plant a box hedge?”. One concept equals improved Google-fu.

One idea can become a series

One of these days I’ll have some free time (ha!) and I’ll take the Twitter post series I wrote back at the start of February and turn it into one comprehensive guide. Initially that series started out as one “Introduction to Twitter” post before I realised it would be completely overwhelming and far far too long. Instead, I split it into a week’s worth of posts, each covering one idea. It was much more effective and much less scary for new Twitter users, and I could cover all the relevant points in more detail than I could if I was trying to cram them all together.

Your 5-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

Plan an article about one idea and schedule a time to write it. (I’m looking for guest posters if you want to be heard here!)

What’s the concept you’ll write your next article about? Tell me in the comments!

Collaboration is a wonderful tool. Go read this account of how a gifted musician can make a concert a collaborative experience. (I’m one of the people who will be proud to say “I knew Pamela when…”) I don’t need to make those points again; I couldn’t do better.

That kind of collaboration has a number of benefits.

The pressure to create, to produce, to say something new… if you’re the only content producer it can be overwhelming. When other people are involved, they spark new conversations, bring new energy and make exciting new possibilities. So bring in your readers!

Your readers will like you more, trust you more, and appreciate you more. They know they’re not just a number to you, they’re a valuable part of the community.

How do you start the collaboration?

I’ve been thinking for awhile about ways I could do this. I write and welcome guest posts (if you want to guest post, let me know!), and I have a number of small to large projects brewing with some of you.

New inspiration struck last night at 2am as I lay awake cursing my sinuses and blowing my nose, and unlike many of my late-night genius ideas (which I either forget or realise are completely ridiculous come morning) this one is kinda interesting, I think. (I hope!)

Short Thought

You inspire me with your opinions and thoughts. I want to encourage that, give you a chance to be seen, and build something together.

The idea: A question is asked. (I asked the first one, but I’d like people to take turns!) Each participant responds with a one-to-two sentence answer, either by video (very much preferable) or with text and an image. I stitch all of them together into a video that includes your name and website address, which we can each publish and distribute as we like.

Here’s the example, with only my answers, of course:

Are you interested? Here’s what to do:

- If you have a webcam, video camera, or any other recording device and you are brave enough to use it (please please yes), record a short answer to the question “What does the internet need?”. Don’t add the subtitle with your name and website address, I’ll do that.

- Otherwise, find an appropriate background image (nice and big) and email it to me with your text version. (If you’re a Photoshop whiz, feel free to DIY. I’m using Rockwell font because I like it, but do it however you like!)

- If it’s small enough you can email it to me, if you’re on Gmail I have a shared folder set up (tell me your email address and I will add you to it), if you’re on Skype you can send it to me, otherwise there’s a squillion file uploaders like YouSendIt that you can use.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

If this idea appeals to you, do it. (You’ve got three days, then I’ll release the final version.) If not? Spend five minutes coming up with a collaboration project for your website.

Are you on board? Tell me in the comments!

Darlings, I think maybe I have the flu. My head is fuzzy, every limb is tired, and my head weighs ten tonnes. Writing is like building a ziggurat, with every word laboriously heaved into place. (Grammar and punctuation are still okay though. I have Standards.)

I really, really don’t want to be writing. I want to be half-asleep on the couch watching David Boreanaz be chinly and engaging.

But after thirty years of delaying and non-committing, I finally understand a bit of wisdom I’d heard but never absorbed:

The fewer excuses you accept from yourself, the more success you will have.

For me, excuses are such a slippery slope that I have to reject any short of actual decapitation.

I write every day. I can’t futz around with measures like “regularly” or “twice weekly”. I need the clear measurable ticky-box standard of Every Day.

Today, I have a really good excuse not to write. I could skip a day. But if I did, next time it would be a pretty good excuse, and then a moderately good reason, and then it’s six weeks since I posted anything and the website has tumbleweeds rolling down its main street.

The funny thing is, I feel a bit better now I’ve started. I almost always do!

• Once I get my shoes on and start to walk.
• When I start sorting out the important papers.
• When I finally have the talk I’ve needed to have.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

Think about the last few excuses you used. Were they still reasonable afterwards? If not, make a note to yourself: those excuses aren’t allowed any more.

Do you have any acceptable excuses or do you need a zero-tolerance policy? Tell me in the comments!

(I will respond. But not right away, because I really do need to lie down.)

As part of the website heresy month, I wanted to talk about a heresy that’s related to the workplace, and to how you help your customers. It’s the principle that you should never make the job you do obsolete. I suspect (and hope) I’m not alone in thinking that making yourself obsolete – working yourself out of a job – is in fact the awesomest thing you can do.

I’ve done work at companies where they’ve had That Guy, ossified into his corner cubicle like one of the crew on The Flying Dutchman, secure in the knowledge that he’ll continue to do the same job for the next twenty years, just the same as he’s been doing that same job for the last twenty years. The Catholics called that Purgatory. If you can avoid it, no one wants to solve the same problem, work at the same task, over and over again for eternity.

If you were a personal trainer, having clients who’d already started to go through a program like Hundred Pushups after an initial consult, and had started to get jazzed by seeing results would have to be a win. Then you could take their blossoming dedication to routine and basic fitness and start molding them into Roman Gladiators.

There’s only one of you, so there’s only so much you can do with your time. Working out ways to deal with these entry-level, starting problems lets you deal with the more interesting problems that you’d move on to after that, as a starting point. It lets you and your customers get to The Next Level.

You? You’re not worried about being obsolete because you’re nimble on your feet, and able to reinvent yourself. Making your old job obsolete is only an issue if you can’t see what the next level is for what you’re doing currently. Hell, the next step might even be doing something different that still helps clients in the same industry. Built To Last is a great book that touches on this area. It talks about examples of companies that have been around for over a hundred years, and how they’ve managed that. And the interesting thing is that some of them have moved into very different industries, or reinventing themselves to adapt to changing markets. IBM is a great example – they started out making glorified calculators.

From experience across IT consulting and commercial voice work, the principle holds true. There’s a core set of values and abilities that can be applied for success across a number of fields.

Don’t do it because you want to stay ahead of the curve, or because Someone Else Will Do It If We Don’t. Do it because it increases the overall Awesomness Quotient.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

Look at the current services you offer to customers, and see if there’s something that can be automated, or made unnecessary by educating your clients. (plumber with too many great clients and too little time? what about putting together a basic leaflet on how to change tap washers?)

The second step is thinking about what you could do for clients with the time you’ve just saved. What’s the Next Level?

Do you have a job you could remove yourself from? Tell us in the comments!

Postscript

Some of you might not be aware of who I am, but I’m the sharply-dressed guy on the left of the banner. Due to a number of factors (mostly work) I haven’t been around as much as you all deserve, so I’m doing the right thing by you all and the site and moving to more of an assisting role. There’s no ugly drama behind this – Catherine and I remain fast friends, and I’m quietly hoping that this shift actually sees me around more in the months to come, not less.

Education leads to action.

Or as one of my personal heroes, Henry Rollins, puts it:

Knowledge without mileage equals bullshit.

There’s a limit on how much you can study without implementing the stuff you’ve learned. There’s a time when you have to stop buying and reading yet another perspective on a subject you already know and you have to start doing it.

Learning as avoidance

Ever read an article on Copyblogger or checked in to a useful forum instead of writing your own content (or developing a product or answering a customer email or whatever it is you felt you should have been really doing)? It’s such a sneaky way to avoid work, because you can claim to yourself, “Hey! I’m working here! I’m learning new techniques! That’ll help me when I get around to doing that thing…”

It can work on a bigger scale, too. I’d been considering starting this website for years before we did it, and every time I felt I was close to getting started I’d buy another infoproduct instead. It was in many ways the best way I could delay: I’m writing a super-long list of some of the resources I have bought and they are doozies! So much smart stuff in there. But for a long time I had all the smart in there and I did nothing with it… other than acquire yet more smart. If I didn’t have a Day Job and relatively few financial commitments, this would have been the Catherine-Goes-Bankrupt phase.

Action in learning

When you’re reading/watching/listening to all those resources, you know the part where they say, “Here’s a useful exercise…” and you pretend like you did it but really you sorta answer the questions in your head and so the next section, which builds on your answers from the first, is much less useful and you disengage? Yeah, I didn’t think that was just me. Fill in the worksheets. Complete the assignments. Be accountable to yourself.

Because otherwise you have a learning hobby, not a business. If you’re like me that’s a fun hobby – I love to learn. But there has never been success created by just having knowledge in your head. You have to do something with that knowledge to succeed.

Your 5-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

1. Make a list of all the resources you’ve learned from in the last month, including blogs, infoproducts, Awesomeness Consulting, books, TV, wise old men on the subway…

2. For each one, list one action you could take as a result of that learning.

3. Go and do it. I bet you $63.92 that you’ll see far more success than you saw last month. And maybe last year.

What’s one of the actions you’ll be doing? (Bonus points if it’s one that we inspired!) Tell us in the comments!

photo credit: mugley

Design matters. But it only matters so far.

Change your design until it has:

• clear and effective navigation
• enough white space to not look crowded
• a few effective images
• a defined visual hierarchy (where the most important elements are the biggest, boldest and most obvious)
• no more than two, maybe three fonts
• no more than three, maybe four colours
• a search box, and a few other methods for finding content if needed
• minimal clutter
• passed your tests on the desired actions: buying products, signing up for the newsletter, etc

Then stop! Leave the design alone for at least two months, only making changes if they’re really problematic (like not being able to pay money).

Resist the urge to re-do the design because you think it’s gotten “stale”. It’s a good sign when you’re getting a bit sick of the look; that means it’s getting familiar and comfortable for your visitors. Keep a list for feedback and ideas, but don’t implement them.

Instead, spend all that extra time writing content and building relationships. If you use tweaking your design as an avoidance activity (instead of doing the important but scary stuff), be very careful not to replace it with a different avoidance activity. Your Twitter background can wait, and your business cards are fine. So is your logo. Stop it. (Some of you are clutching your chests and thinking, “Oh no! She’s on to me! But how does she know?” Yeah, umm, I just guessed. I’ve never spent three hours changing my colour schemes so finely that no-one noticed but me. Nope.)

Ask questions, and get crystal clear on what your visitors need from you and what they respond to.

Then do your next redesign with a focus on those things.

Your 5-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

If your website does not currently have a design with the desirable features above, schedule time and/or money to rectify it.

If your website does have all those features, start the tweak list. And stop fiddling with the design.

What stage are you at with your website design? Tell us in the comments!

Things are going well: the Awesomeness Consulting sessions have been a blast, and I now have a regular consulting client (sweet!). There’s been some great response to the website heresy series; our daily visitors are up, and we’re selling copies of the Website in a Weekend course without doing anything to market it.

But right now I’m not happy. And I want to talk about it.

Warning: contains LOTS of graphic cussing, irrational thought and hyperbole. You are not required to read on.

Join Twitter, they say. We say. I say! You’ll meet lots of new people and you can connect with the greatest minds in the world and it will be Awesome. And this is technically true. You CAN meet new people. You CAN connect with the greatest minds in the world. But if you translate “connect” into “get to know well” or “become best friends with”… well, you’re asking for Social Media to rip your heart out and turn it into a dildo to fuck you in the ass with.

Scott Stratten will not be your buddy.
Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein will not be your buddy.
Chris Brogan will not be your buddy.
Naomi Dunford will not be your buddy.
Sonia Simone will not be your buddy.
Anyone with more than 10,000 followers will not be your buddy.

This isn’t an equal relationship. You’ve put them on a special list so that you can follow every word they say; you know about their cat, their kid, their preferences in spaghetti sauce. But you… you’re just another scrolling name. You’re noise.

This hurts me. I fear Being Left Out. And when I realise that some of my mentors don’t even know my name? My heart beats loud and heavy in my chest and I’m anguished. Anguished. This is all my schoolyard pains, all the rejections of my life, all the Stuff I thought I outgrew… this is all my wounds waiting for me. And they don’t hurt less because you understand the math.

At first I thought, this takes time! Eventually we will be friends and they will link to my posts the way they link to other people’s. I’ll start turning up in the recommended lists. I will become one of the Chosen Ones.

Right. Right?

But the Cool Kids keep talking to each other, and I’m standing outside the circle, laughing at the jokes and making comments that no-one hears. Feeling yearning and left-out. And unloved. And angry.

Fuck’em if they don’t love me. Fuck them.

Oh God I suck. There are hundreds of people following me, and a core of a few dozen who DO comment on my posts, RT my stuff, encourage me and appreciate what I do. And some of them are reading this and thinking, “What am I? Chopped liver?” No. No! And also yes. It doesn’t seem to matter how many wonderful people appreciate me. For fuck’s sake, one reader made a website based on a conversation we had. See that icon for Website in a Weekend in the sidebar? She made that so she could promote my product! I have fans, I have friends.

And yet. And yet.

When Sonia Simone responds to a forum offer for free Awesomeness Consulting to vouch for my awesomeness I think, “Yeah, but you’d never take me up on it.”

When Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein retweets something I’ve done for her and adds I think, “Is that it?”

When I’ve been looking forward to my consulting session with Scott Stratten for weeks and his secretary cancels at the last minute and I know, I know that I’m Just Another Appointment, I burn with resentment and shame.

When I realise that I will sometimes have more meaningful interactions with these people, but it will only be because I am paying them money for it, I cry and clench and fume and sigh.

I may never make it. And even if I form my own group, even if I become the next generation of Cool Kid, this will still hurt me.

Please, please. Please come be my friend and approve of me and treat me as an equal.

Please.

[EDIT: There has been a LOT of excellent commentary and follow-up. If you want to see this explored more, including a saner and more balanced version of this post written two days later, please read the questions about social media, and my new social media rules and a more thoughtful analysis of a problem in social media. There have also been two posts written by other people exploring their own thoughts: Go have a look at Wendy (who hasn't disowned me for bad language) talking about being naked in social media and Gulfsprite continuing her thoughts on social media relationships and expectations. They're both great and thought-provoking reads.]