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!

Social media encourages two common and contradictory mistakes. Social media is fun that way.

Over-committing to social media

You wake up and check your Twitter, check out the new followers and send five replies and seven retweets. Then off to Facebook to respond to 82 comments on your fan page (you get through 20 by copy/pasting as a response), then back to Twitter, three more replies and a direct message about a new article from someone you want to connect with so you StumbleUpon and Digg the article and link in Twitter and realise your feed’s been pretty quiet so you announce the first thought in your head (bagels. Less crispy than when I was a kid, amirite?) Then back to your personal Facebook page, quickly scan the sixteen pages of updates, strategically use your smily face again, go to a forum you like and hang out for awhile, then spend twelve minutes answering a few questions in LinkedIn, back to Twitter, Digg another post… where did the day go?

You feel tired, frazzled and unfulfilled, because none of those “relationships” went anywhere.

But why would they? You just spent a whole day making hasty, impersonal and shallow connections on social media. That wasn’t strategic, that was a waste.

To build relationships you have to keep showing up with your full attention. There’s only so much you to go around! You need to choose the social media sites that:

• Your potential and existing customers use
• You enjoy using
• Are aligned with your online strategy

And you shouldn’t use many! One is fine. Two is possible. Three is stretching it. There is no four.

Choose them, and invest in them. Turn up every day and add some value. Keep connecting and showing how reliable and interesting and funny and knowledgeable you are.

Under-committing to social media

You open your Twitter client and skim through the latest tweets, then close it and go do something else. You read the lastest forum posts and reply with “great job!”  You give five thumbs-up on Facebook. You connect with 500 people on LinkedIn, post nothing, and wait for them to offer you work.

Is it any wonder this goes nowhere?

To connect you have to bring some value. Your insights, your advice, and most important, yourself. Saying you’re “using social media” when you’re not interacting is like going to a networking event, lurking in the corner all night, and wondering why no-one has your business card.

Step it up! Start conversations. Leave comments. Write about your ill-fitting shoes or your fantastic clients or your football team. Be interesting, interested, engaged and personal. Write in your voice, not corp-speak. Act like you’re at a family barbeque. Be a real person.

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

1. Decide on which social media sites you’re going to use.

2. Stop using the others.

3. Spend a half hour on each: connecting, joking, advising, replying, linking and commenting.

4. Too much? Then go back to step 1.

What social media are you using? Tell us in the comments!

Imagine Mr Moneybags walking down the street. He has so much disposable income in his pockets that his pants are starting to sag a bit and he has dreadful lower back pain. But suddenly! there you are offering to sell him your wares. It doesn’t even matter what they are, he accepts. In fact, in order to get rid of the wad of cash in his socks, he pays you sixteen times as much as you asked for in slightly fragrant but nonetheless welcome notes. Without even asking your name he tips his hat and skips down the street…

…and then you wake up.

Marketing in the real world

Real people buy for two reasons:

• need
• emotion

Selling to need (real need: water in the middle of the desert, or plumbing to a man with exploded pipes, or umbrellas in a sudden rainstorm) is easy. You tell them what they’re gonna get and how much it costs. They buy. Done.

But the vast, vast majority of things we buy aren’t things we really need.

What does this have to do with the heading?

Wait, liebchen, all will be explained.

Well?

Okay, okay! So you’re selling goods and services that require that your customers feels something before they buy. (What that emotion is will depend on what you sell. If you’re stuck, this article on what problem your product/service really solves might help.) For large retailers, they can amp up the emotions as much as possible, knowing they’re the one who will benefit. Apple doesn’t care which store you buy your iPod at. Jim’s Mowing doesn’t care which of their franchisees mow your lawn. However you purchase, they profit.

But you, you have fewer ways to sell. You have to make sure that your customer comes to you when they feel in a buying mood. The best way to ensure they choose you instead of all the other people? Make them trust you, like you, know you. Build a relationship and you’ll be the one they think of when they need what you have. So you need a bit of time to develop that relationship before they buy.

I’m sure you’ve seen websites that are like the hand-lettered signs in cranky newsagents: Buy Something or Get Out.

This is daft.

You need reasons for your potential customers to hang around with you before they’re ready to buy. That’s why blogs are so useful, that’s why Twitter kicks ass, that’s why encouraging people to sign up to a mailing list rocks. They are all ways to get on your customer’s radar now, while they’re interested, but before they’re ready to buy.

However! that’s only half the picture. You can’t develop a great relationship by shouting at someone, and you certainly don’t want to create completely passive customers: passive customers won’t take the action required to give you money.

So what do I do?

You give your customers ways to connect, actions to take, ways to build the relationship from their side. Ways to get them involved!

• The magnificent Sparky Firepants had a spur-of-the-moment draw-his portrait competition. It was random and fun and engaging, and appropriate to who he is and the services he offers. (Feel free to admire my delightful entry.)
• Ask questions on your blog and get people’s opinions. Everyone loves to be heard! Everyone loves people who ask their opinion and/or advice! Take the extra time to respond to the comments, and take the conversation much further.
• Hang out and be friends on Twitter.
• Run a survey on your blog. Ask what topics people would like you to cover, what articles they like, what you haven’t done well…
• Offer to do guest posts.
• Let them do guest posts on your blog.
• Talk about their successes – interviews, case studies.
• Give testimonials.

All of these actions involve no money. They do, however, require a small investment of time, attention, thought, or dodgy Photoshop skills. When your potential customers see that you use that investment of theirs well (by answering their comments, chatting on Twitter, implementing their suggestions, respecting their opinions, etc), then they feel more comfortable about investing other things with you. Things like cash.

So for example…

I’m watching with joy as you build your increasingly more awesome websites; they are the best possible proof that I’m doing great work. In fact, I’d like to have a showcase of them. If you’d like to have your website (and a pretty glowing recommendation) listed on this website, let me know in the comments.

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

Make sure that there are at least three engagement tools on your website that do not involve money. If there aren’t, plan to start them very soon.

Do you have plenty of engagement methods? Do you want to be involved in the Awesome Showcase? Tell us in the comments!

This is the last post that directly references the highly emotional post about social media and scalability, although I have had a number of very interesting comments from there and the follow-up post that will turn into other posts later. After much thought and conversation I have come to a conclusion: that post was the truth. It just wasn’t ALL the truth.

That post came directly from the 5% of me that is irrational, emotional, somewhat immature, needy and intense. Every word was the truth as My Unreason sees it. But without the rest of me to provide some balance, it wasn’t the whole truth. I’ve decided to write the balanced version below because I think it’s a more useful article when it shows both sides. Also, My Unreason is incapable of considering the impact of her statements; I need the rest of me to reduce the fallout.

Like everyone else I have some established rules about my online interactions and what I will and will not share. I’m adding the following rules:

The New Rules

• I will not vent my feelings about someone in a public forum. I will tell them privately and give them a chance to respond.
• If I do talk about stuff like this again, no identifying details will be used.
• I will clearly state “THESE ARE MY ISSUES AND DO NOT NECESSARILY RESEMBLE REALITY” as appropriate.
• I will give my volatile posts a chance to calm down. NOT to edit myself, just to ensure I’m telling the whole truth and not accidentally being an asshole.
• As in the offline world, if I’m unsure about someone’s feelings I will ASK THEM. Still works online, apparently. (We’ll see.)

Do you think that sets the right boundaries to respect other people while still allowing me to be honest?

Because I do want to keep being honest. The only regret I have about that post is the hurt it caused. From the responses, it struck a chord with a lot of people, and it produced a stunning amount of thought and discussion. Like Naomi and The Dude said in the comments, “I absolutely think you should be able to say what you think and feel at all times”. But it’s how you say it that can make this article either a useful and thought-provoking passionate essay on the problems inherent in social media, or a psychotic and unprofessional shrew-scream from the soapbox.

I’ve learnt a lot from this experience. Thank you to all the people who commented and emailed to agree with me. Thank you very much to those who came to disagree.

And dearest Wendy, I’m probably going to keep swearing occasionally. Thanks for sticking it out so far despite your shock. I’m very grateful.

The lie of social media, the saner balanced version

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 intimately” 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 can’t be your buddy.
Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein can’t be your buddy.
Chris Brogan can’t be your buddy.
Naomi Dunford can’t be your buddy.
Sonia Simone can’t be your buddy.
Anyone with more than 10,000 followers can’t be your buddy.

It’s impossible. The people I’ve listed are insanely generous with their time and attention, but as Naomi Dunford eloquently described it, she gets 800 emails and 100 Twitter followers every day. There is no possible way for her to connect with all the people who want to talk to her.

But because of one of the quirks of social media and personality marketing, we feel we know these people well. They share a lot of themselves and their personal lives! We connect to that and we become friends with them… but they don’t have the time and bandwidth to do the same thing to us. A lot of the time they don’t know we exist. And this is where I start going a leetle bit crazy. Apparently I’m not the only one.

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?

Rationally, yes. I’m still pretty small fry and I’ve really only been doing using social media with discipline and purpose for about 4 months. It’s not logical to expect that everyone I read will know who I am and be starting to pay attention to me this fast. I need to keep showing up and connecting with everyone I want to and given time the busier people will see me more and more in their streams and find time to talk to me. Relationships grow organically.

But in this situation they don’t, I think, at least on one side. I have bought products from every one of those people. Products that all include hours and hours of them talking, often quite personally about their lives and mistakes. Reading posts that are encouraging me to engage with them, to like them, to become friends with them. That’s how personality marketing works. So I have an emotional connection to these people and I buy all their stuff and they’re still not paying much attention to me. You know the friend who seems glad to see you but they’re never the one that calls to hang out? You start hating that friend, a little, because they clearly value you less than you value them.

Rational thought about how busy they are has little power over, “You wanted me to be friends with you. You bent over backwards to make me like you. And now you don’t want to hang out? Fuck you if you don’t like me back. Fuck you.”

This is different from me talking to my followers and commenters, because there’s a one-to-one connection there. We talk to each other, we connect pretty equally (although I already have people who think I’m a rock star. This is so surreal) and we both are clear that we care for each other. They have the time to comment on my posts and tell me that they’re interested in me. I have the time to reply to those comments, further the discussion, and respond to their interest in me. I’m small enough that I can make sure everyone who likes me is appreciated.

The big players can’t. I’m one of hundreds of purchasers, thousands of commenters, tens of thousands of tweeters. Their attention tends to be grouped, and we all feel less special in a group. Thanking everyone who brought your product doesn’t convince me that you know I exist. I paid you, not a group. I connected to you through your content and personality. The imbalance leads to the following situations and reactions:

Situation: Sonia Simone responds to a forum offer for free Awesomeness Consulting, not to accept, but to vouch for my awesomeness
Reason: Aww, that was lovely of her. It’s a pity she’s too busy and already has a darn awesome website. I’d love a chance to talk with her for half an hour.
Unreason: *sudden hope at seeing her name* *read actual comment* Yeah, you’d never take me up on it. You know everything already, I mean I’m learning half of this from you. You’ll never learn from me…

Situation: Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein retweets a tweet about my homework from her 4 Weeks to Live Your Truth course and adds
Reason: Nice. I wish I could get more feedback from her but I understand how careful she has to be with her resources.
Unreason: Is that it? Did she not care? Not like it? What?

Situation: I have a consulting session with Scott Stratten but his secretary cancels at the last minute due to horrible tech failure
Reason: Damn, I was really looking forward to that call. I wish he’d let me know that he was too.
Unreason:I know, I know. I’m Just Another Appointment. He probably has no idea who I am and he doesn’t care about me one bit. *angry tears*

Ironically, this last one was quite untrue. Scott did know, and did care. And if there was just Scott and I in the world he would have been able to tell me so and I would have been totally happy. But there wasn’t just him and me. There was him and me and 49,999 other people. And there is no way that anyone can relate to 50,000 people like that. If he was just broadcasting information that wouldn’t be an issue. But he, and the others, are broadcasting themselves. The tragedy of scale in social media is not that we can’t talk to 50,000 people; mass media can do that part fine. It’s that we can’t respond to 50,000 people.

I very much doubt I’m the only person who feels this way. I’m just the only one daft and selfish enough to write a very public post about it.

Again, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[EDIT: There have already been LOTS of fantastic comments and conversations both here and elsewhere. And two posts from readers exploring their own thoughts on the subject. 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.]

[Edit 2: As requested:]

For next time.

So yesterday I blurted out a highly emotional post about social media and what I described as the big lie: Anyone with 10,000 followers on Twitter will not be your buddy.

I wrote, with very strong NSFW language, about some specific events that I had experienced recently and how I felt about them.

Lots of people (including two of the people I had named), commented to agree with me. A few disagreed with me. And one of the people I named was hurt, and thought I was using objectionable tactics to get the attention of the people that, you know, I was writing about desiring the attention of. (I wasn’t doing so consciously. But on some level he’s probably right.) The comments are really interesting, and worth reading.

From this post and its 64 comments, I have a few thoughts.

Seemed like a good idea at the time…

I wish I hadn’t written the post. No, I’m glad I did. I wish I hadn’t tweeted it. No, glad I did! My grandchildren and employers and posterity can read it and that’s bad. No, it’s great! Worst thing I ever wrote. Best thing I ever wrote!

Argh.

There is a part of all of us that is incredibly naive. That always, always thinks that it’s going to work out for the best, that doesn’t see the need for the seatbelt, that stands there in the rubble saying, “How did that happen?” And it has a partner: the voice that will say incredibly ugly, mean, hurtful and selfish things, because we’re thinking them.

These are a part of me. They’re a part of you. So what do we do with those parts of ourselves?

Do we drown our inner voices as wrong and bad?
Do we choose our audiences oh-so-carefully, and target parts of ourselves accordingly?
And how does that mesh with the ideas of “authenticity”?

The inner voice speaks

That post was so very, very emotional because it was about thoughts I’d been having for months and suppressing. In the first six hours of aftermath, where the comments were positive, I felt about 10kg lighter. I’d Gotten it Off My Chest. I was back to my usual self: impossibly cheery, liking everyone, enjoying the interactions. I’d purged the bile that was choking me and I felt better. It was all okay.

And then someone felt hurt and it got complicated and fraught and oh-so-human. Should I have not published it? Just writing the post didn’t make the feelings go away. It was expressing them to the world (and, specifically, to the people I was thinking about) that brought the intense relief.

Did I have the right to do that? To publically air my dirty laundry, to specifically name people and tell them I’d done so? Are my feelings enough justification to say whatever I want? And if they aren’t, what do we do with them?

Targeted authenticity

That post was authentic: it was my thoughts, expressed in the way I thought them. It was ugly, and forceful, and mean, and honest. There are ways in which I could have tailored the message: a different forum, a selected audience, toned-down delivery. I’ve used them before. I did not use them this time. Does that make me a hero for authenticity? A bold voice in the wilderness, saying That Which No-one Hath Dared Say? Or just a really public asshole?

Depends on who you ask, apparently. Maybe all of them.

How do you reconcile the desire for complexity, to be a fully-realised human being, with Brand Me? Brand Catherine is the happy smiling face, the cheerful over-user of the word “awesome”, the helpful chatterer. Brand Catherine never talks about anything ugly. And Brand Catherine leaves the other 5% of me, the selfish grasping petulant sensuous imperfect depressed and irritating parts, with nowhere to go.

It used to be said that for this purpose you had a personal blog. Somewhere to talk about your haemorrhoids and phobias and your vulnerable, imperfect, human side. But does that work in the new 2.0 world? In the world of transparency, social media, personality marketing, authenticity… does that require that all of you be on show? Or are we all playing roles, carefully contructed personas, with all the bad stuff happening behind the facade? Oh, we can talk about bad events in web 2.0. But bad thoughts, bad feelings? Do we just all pretend that we never wanted to shove someone into traffic so they’d stop yammering at us?

And if so, what does that say about the relationships we form there?

I have no answers. I would love to hear yours.

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.]

We interrupt the stream of heresies for a guest post by Mike. Less controversial, but it’s funny and makes a lot of sense.

Whether you’ve paid much attention to it…err…scratch that. Whether you’ve jumped into the social media trend or not, one clear fact remains: Social media has taken over the web as we know it.

And the truth is, many are absolutely capitalizing on this massive traffic and building up their brand and websites through it. Whether you think Twitter is dumb or Facebook is this or that, you should still think about making your site more social. Good chances are, your visitors and readers use them so it would actually be a convenience for them if you made a few little changes.

1. Make it clear where else they can find you. Not all sites don’t do this but there are cases where people will forget to display their social profiles in clear view. Big mistake. Just because people visit your site or read your blog, doesn’t mean that’s all they’ll be interested in. You’d be surprised how many would like to follow you on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook. Try it and see.

2. Make your site “socially” shareable. What I mean by that is get a retweet button like on Be Awesome Online, a Facebook share button, and depending on what you want to do, social bookmark buttons or a plugin so people can share on Digg, Stumbleupon, etc.

You probably already do that but also pay attention to where these things are located. Maybe test them in different locations and see what happens. What could have been there may perform better here and so on. It’s awesome that people come to read what you have to say and comment, but it’s even cooler when those same people share your content and bring in new visitors that do the same.

3. The holy grail: Be social yourself! You’ve got the profiles created, you have the accounts setup, now get out there and start talking with people. Yeah, post links to your new content and things of that nature, but be more social yourself. You don’t have to have a novel idea or an amazing topic starter to get into the conversation…you just need to get talking and engaging with other like-minded people.
Your social media profiles are an extension of your brand and site so by being more social yourself, you’ll increase the value of your site and potentially create a very nice traffic stream.

In what ways are you using social media? Are you using it to build your brand/site or are you using it for personal use? Also, any tips to add to the discussion?

Mike Stenger is a social media consultant with a strong passion of business and all things Internet. You can find Mike at his blog where he talks about success, business and social media strategies. You can also follow Mike on Twitter.

Reflect for a few minutes: you’ve been growing your website in small increments over time. We don’t notice how much a child has grown until their shoes mysteriously don’t fit, or how much our website has slowly improved.

1. Do you take regular measurements of a few key metrics? If not, open up a spreadsheet and start measuring!

We measure our visitors, subscribers, Twitter followers, revenue earnt, comments, and number of coaching sessions on a weekly basis. You don’t have to use the same metrics or check them as often, but you need something to measure your progress. Use the data to check your strategies are effective, use it to make predictions, and most of all use it on those “This isn’t working, nothing’s happened, I’ve flatlined and we are doooooomed” days.

2. If you blog, go back to one of your earliest posts. Has your style improved since then? Do you get more comments now?

3. Do people share your content on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Posterous and the rest?

4. Do you have a folder to keep praise and positive feedback in? They’re a great pick-me-up and a continued encouragement to keep doing your best work.

5. How many clients, purchases, interested buyers, requests for a brochure and sales have you had? If you have a small trickle, they add up over time!

Don’t forget, you’ve only got until the end of February to sign up for the free awesomeness consulting. I’ve had 35 fantastic wonderful clever-pants people sign up so far and I can cope with more! (I’m powered by excitement, you see). If you are one of the delightful and rather good-looking signups, make sure I have your email address as I’ll be sending you an email with all the details once the month is over.

So, how much has your little website grown up? Tell us in the comments!