(If you’re blogging for pleasure or your own entertainment, skip this post and read any of these wonderful stories.)

Is the purpose of your blog easy to define? What are you aiming towards accomplishing with it? How are you testing whether or not you’re reaching your desired effect?

My blog has changed a lot over the years. At first, I blogged just for pleasure. Then, I realized that I was developing a community, and that my community wanted some consistent, useful information, so somewhere around a few years ago, things started to make more sense. Here’s a little bit of the backstory.

My Blog’s Many Faces

When I started my blog many years ago (it skittered across several domains before I landed in “real” blog software), it was for fiction. I wrote stories. Then, I wrote about fitness and nutrition. Then, I wrote about self-improvement. Then, I wrote about new media. I went from that into writing about social networks and social media, and then eventually, I moved into how businesses could use social media to improve.

What am I writing about these days? Human business. It’s essentially the idea that relationships and human-shaped experiences serve business much better than cold marketing and afterthought customer service.

What will I write about next? I’m planning some changes to [chrisbrogan.com] in the near term. My redesign by Snowy Day Design is just the beginning, and you’ll be invited along for the ride. That said, I won’t change direction too far afield. You’ll most likely still like it.

Keeping a Focus and a Purpose

Your blog is a media property. It’s also a tool that allows you to build relationships (should that be of interest), to notify and inform (if you like telling the news), to reflect and react (if you like being a commentator), to report (if that’s something you enjoy doing), or a tool to educate, instruct, or establish thought leadership. It can be a call to action, a lead generator, a showcase for your talents, and many other things.

The question is: what will you choose as your focus, and how do you define its purpose?

Can you blog without purpose? Absolutely. Can you unfocus your blog? It happens all the time.

But your community (or your audience, if you’re not as close to them) are there with an expectation. They are seeking whatever it is you’ve been offering along the way. They want your best, and they want your material to enlighten, entertain, inform, inspire, or any of several other functions.

With that in mind, and accepting that things change over time, my question remains: what is the focus and purpose of your blog?

Photo credit respres

There’s a lot of that in self-improvement, in motivation, in marketing.

We say similar things a different way, working away at what’s inside you. When I think about you, and all the confidence hiding below your surface waiting to be pulled forth, I think about what we could accomplish if it were coaxed out. You’re confident in some things, and very uncomfortable with others. Imagine if more of what came out was the confidence, the conviction, the passion (which I recently heard described as the intersection of anger and love).

People say that I write about business the way others write about relationships. That’s because business is relationships. That’s how I see it. Who do you deal with? People. Who do you sit around with all day in office buildings? People. Everything you’re doing in your nonprofit to raise more funds, to get more awareness, to build a following is human-based.

We’re all looking for ways to sink the meanings in deeper. We’re all looking for tools to equip us. You came here for that today. You come here for that all the time. You trust me to say something that will spark an idea, and you will then take that idea and make some value of it. I shared with you the difference between recipe and restaurant, and maybe you got value from thinking of how you process (and then APPLY/EXECUTE the information).

But it’s all 100 words for snow, and we’re all talking about talking, and that’s how it’s supposed to be, and you saying “that’s nothing I haven’t heard before” means that the universe is saying back to you, “Yeah, but did you DO anything with it?”

Photo credit kevindooley

Every week, I smile and appreciate the feedback. That’s what you do with feedback. You mine it to see if there’s something of value. You take the better parts. You consider the lenses that people use to say what they’ve said, and you move forward.

The funny part, to me, is that over the last year, while every week I have somehow been called out for something bad I’ve done, I’ve also done the following (forgive my bragging; it’s my birthday today):

• Launched a company that started in the black and finished strong in its first year.
• Doubled my company’s revenue in the first few months of 2010.
• Worked with over 20 Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 clients.
• Co-wrote a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling book.
• Wrote and published another successful book.
• Helped launch a successful online marketing community forum.
• Spoke professionally at over 100 events globally in front of tens of thousands of people.
• Raised money for different charity projects every month of 2009, and on track for every month of 2010.
• Appeared on Dr. Phil, in BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, and several other publications.
• And gave you something to think about just about every day of the year.

While you’re over there blogging about my demise, I’ll be over here figuring out the future and being helpful to as many people as I can.

Show me a shark. I’ll jump it. (No, not you, Georgia Aquarium, but you were kind to offer.)

Update: Kenneth Lim reminded me of this great video Colin Browning did last year:

As With All Things, Goals First

I decided to tell myself the story of me, the story of me for the next few years. This comes from my experience with Don Miller’s book. In my efforts to determine how to conduct my business and my life, I started with goals. I won’t share the details, but I have goals for (in no order):

• New Marketing Labs.
• Books and other publications.
• Professional speaking.
• My new business (not yet announced, but maybe by end of week) and related projects like Third Tribe Marketing.
• [chrisbrogan.com] – some changes coming here.
• Work/Life balance
• Fitness/Nutrition

Those are the major buckets, at least. And I cut those down from 17 projects. I killed about 10 over the last two days. That was first: deciding what goals would yield the best rewards for me (I measured “best” by happiness, satisfaction, money, time).

By starting with my goals for those various buckets/roles, I can then ask myself every time something new comes in: “Does this contribute to the success of my goals?” Having the answer this this is golden.

Actual Paper

I use paper when I redraw. I quite literally draw little pictures with circles or boxes, and I do lots of simple math (I really only know how to do simple math, but if I wrote just “math,” you’d think that I was doing something huge).

On paper, it’s a lot easier to see what’s working for me. For instance, I’m a believer in the mindset of having multiple revenue streams. I have a job (president of New Marketing Labs), but I also make some of my money speaking professional, through my affiliate programs, my books, and through a few other sources.

When I put down what I could make from where, it helps me understand where to focus some of my attention to achieve my revenue goals. But then, I have to overlay the “time” goals, the happiness goals, etc. With PAPER, it’s a lot easier to overlay information for my consideration. For instance, I can draw a little “$, T, H” symbol for money, time, happiness and determine which meets more of the criteria. Make sense?

Silence

This part is the hardest for me. I don’t really handle silence well (thinking about you, Alanis). But I can’t do what I’m doing to redraw, answer emails, tweet, and all that. I paused a lot of the external noise so that I could find some silence. I’m still doing it as I type this. And yet, I sneak back into my noise because that’s part of my job, and thus, at present, I have to maintain some of it.

But, if you asked, silence would be a vital element to the process, and I’ve done what I can to silence the noise when I can.

Lots of Questions

I described the process to a friend the other day like this: “You might see a chip of paint peeling on the wall and think, ‘huh, this wall needs painting.’ I look at the chip of paint and think, ‘should this wall even be here? Should *I* even be here?’”

I look at the frames through which I see things. For instance, do you see yourself as an employee or a leader? I know some people who make amazing employees, but who are horrible leaders. I’m not even the best leader (Justin can tell you that), but I’m a great operator/thinker/tinkerer. I’m the kind of person who can see something unique, noodle it into a working prototype, and then get others to weaponize it (most of the time). Knowing this about myself lets me know which types of businesses I’ll be better suited to create/operate.

What types of questions are helpful to redrawing?

• Does this make me happy?
• Who am I doing this for?
• Does this add to my primary goals?
• Where am I? Is this where I want to be?
• If I stop doing this, what really happens?
• What would be totally fun? Can I feed my family doing that?
• What would my ideal day look like?
• How many airplanes do I really want to be on in a given year?

These are somewhat from my perspective, and somewhat generic. You can make your own questions. They’re free. The answers sometimes cost money, but the questions are free.

Action Plans

Goals without plans are meaningless. Plans without deadlines and measurements are wishes. Thus, I have plans in place. They are very flexible plans, and they rotate on a few of my goal/measurement hinges from above, but they are clear and I will know if I achieve what I set out to do.

The thing is, I know that I won’t be successful if all I do is write out some new plans about my business. It won’t work. I learned that from reading and exercising what I learned in Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath. So, I have to build the entire frame of what I do. Here’s some of what’s included in that framing work (in no real order, and in no real system – YET):

• Put time blocks in place for correspondence. Stop checking mail 45,974 times a day.
• Set time limits on RSS reading.
• Start my day with fitness, not email.
• 2000 words a day (some days, I did 4000; others I did 0. I want to steady-state this).
• Mind everything I eat.
• Move daily.

You know, things like that. But then, I also have real live plans with numbers and dates attached to most of those. Like weight goals, fitness goals, etc. So that’s the most important part.

Finally, Check-Ins

In this case, I mean check-ins to reconsider how I’m doing with my framing. I have mine set for every four months. That way, I can analyze a bit at a time, without tweaking it so often that I feel I’m not getting any traction. But without checking in, I don’t get the chance to see if this is all making sense and heading towards an end goal.

That’s the stuff I’ve put into it.

Your Mileage Will Vary- Try Anyway

Lots of us get stuck and stay stuck. Lots of us worry about things outside our control. Lots of times, we’re looking at that peeling chip of paint and not the wall, the house, the town, the land. But we can choose to redraw. We can choose to really look at every decision we’re actively living with, and see whether there aren’t better ways to reach our goals.

Does this make sense to you? Have you ever tried a process like this? How did it help?

How have you come to the decisions you’ve made right now, and what do they mean to you?

Can’t see the video? click here.

Direct link to the video

People always ask which camera I used to shoot my video. I use the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 (that’s a review of the camera).

You’re New Here

In business, we are all new again. All the major car companies can’t assume anything about their customers. Banks aren’t guaranteed to be there forever. Cornerstone institutions are rolling up, sailing away, moving into new modes that don’t benefit us any more. We can’t count on anything. Oh, and on the business side, your customers are losing jobs, merging, consolidating, changing the rules.

Accept that you’re new here. What do you need? You need eyes, ears, intuition, intent, and anthropology.

Your Eyes And Ears

Listening tools abound. You can now see people’s intentions writ large on these various social networks. No, not everyone is out there voicing their opinions, but you can start with the people who are. Use the searching tools to see what people are saying on blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook. Listen around in forums. Google yourself blue. And then process this.

Listening is deafness if you do nothing with it.

Intuition

Want to change the world? Ask thousands of questions. Ask the same handful of questions thousands of times. Ask yourself, “How can I help my customers during these tough times?” Toyota is giving free maintenance for two years as a way to win back sales and customers. It’s a solution that will benefit both sides of the equation. How is your bank treating you during these economic woes? What have you said about it? What will you do?

Intuition about what others need is a powerful tool in this world without maps.

Intent

Do you really care about your customers/prospects? If not, it will show. Do you value them? Show it. Demonstrate it with intent. Make decisions that don’t always benefit you as much as they do the customer. You don’t have to sink the business, but just by showing more intentions to the positive of your customers, you’ll win more opportunity.

What do your actions say about your intent?

Anthropology

You’re looking to better understand the social and cultural development of humans. It’s all we have left, because all the history we had attached to us before has shaken itself off, or it’s clinging to our backs like a prison.

Why are we sending kids to schools that train them to be industrial cogs? What are we doing to help them rebel? How are we reshaping the world, now that the unit of measure is knowledge/information? In a world where we don’t all have to work side by side in a factory, why are we building so many offices?

If you dig into this area, if you start looking for new trends, whispers of what curves are coming next, you see the big stuff. You see the boomer generation growing huge. You see India taking over the creative side of the stick to go along with their dominance of engineering and process management. You see shifts in who’s spending, where we’re paying attention, and more.

This one’s the biggest to consider in that world without maps. Because we need to understand the people more than we need to understand the systems. If you’re trying to re-rig your marketing tech to account for these new territories, you’re wasting time by not starting with understanding the shifts in what humans want/need/are moving towards.

Is This Crazy Talk?

Anyone who just nodded yes, I’ll see you a few years from now and we can talk more. Those of you who get a glimpse of this, who see that we’ve got a new opportunity to really take meaningful action, let’s work in that direction.

What’s your first move? What have you already been doing? What will you do next?

Without maps, where will the lay of the land take you?

If you can’t see the video, click here.

Direct link to the video

What do you think?

People always ask which camera I used to shoot my video. I use the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 (that’s a review of the camera).

The Method Is What We’re Taught to Pursue

We learn our times tables. We learn the 50 states (in the US, at least). We are taught all these rules, these patterns, these systems, these methods. Musicians learn their scales. Painters copy the Masters. Copy. Learn. Make patterns.

Repetition. Finding grooves. Fitting into our assembly lines. Aligning to the way we understand how to measure.

Method. The process by which we get somewhere. Kempo karate is a method of fighting. Kicking the other guy’s ass is the goal.

You see this, right?

“New” is Rarely a Byproduct of Repetition

Except when it is. iPod was a whole new way of framing the music story: 1000 songs (not megabytes and gigabytes). iTunes store not just an orphaned player. Wheel and single button, not a slew of buttons.

And the Nano is the baby of the original, but the iPhone is nothing like the original, except they removed the wheel and left only one button. New. Again.

Now, repetition isn’t the only facet of method, and method isn’t bad. I need to be clear about that. But focusing on perfecting one’s method isn’t as useful as focusing on solving for the goal.

Pursue the Goal, Not the Method

I addressed the International Association of Business Communicators at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City, a painted lady teetering between demolition and emotional buttressing. The room was, as it always is, filled with that mix of the converted, the confused, the naysayers, the proof (that it all works), and me. Me, the street preacher, the jester, the irreverent, the addle-brained and yet target-minded sayer of what everyone swears they already know and blogs that they’ve seen it all before. Common sense. Be human. Be real.

I imagine some of them at their desk today, looking at their monitor, digging into their email, looking at their stats, settling back into the warm cottony folds of what they know how to do, what they were taught to do, what they practiced and repeated and did again and again. Trenchwork, some of it. And some of them are damned pleased and okay to be pleased by performing it.

But some of my people, some of those who saw something, felt the sparkle, caught a whiff of what I’m cooking, they got what I was saying. Old roads have precious little to do with new paths. What came before doesn’t have to explain what should be done next. We don’t have to repeat repeat repeat repeat.

I read once that every cell in our body completely recycles every four days. Perhaps I have it wrong, but when I think of that, I’m caught. I wonder why my scar from cutting my left ring finger while pulling a fern out of the ground during a Boy Scout survival weekend still persists. I wonder why I still have cowlicks in my hair. If every cell is new again, why can’t I be someone else every four days? But this is a side thought. This is a distraction for you to ponder. Scientists need not apply: I’m a disciple of accepting mystery instead of seeking truth. (Delusional, maybe, but pleasantly surprised? Yes.)

Methods change. It’s not that you shouldn’t learn methods, but rather that you should be ready to switch methods by facing the goals.

And Here At the End, The Goal

You will do so much more with your pursuits should you become a pursuer of the goal, and not a student of the method. Okay, SOME of you will. Others, you need the repetition, the ritual, the comfort. That is so very okay. Religion is all that. Okay, most religion is all that. Most religion is the method.

Seek the goal. The goal is equipping people. The goal is satisfying need. The goal is seeking to better others. The goal is to provide. The goal is to make everything work better.

See how that works? Think about your goals. Think about your company’s goals. What if you threw out EVERY method you were using before this very moment? The goals would still be there.

What if you left email behind and used ONLY voice? Could you still reach your goal? What if I stopped blogging and only sent you emails? What if we all shut our computers off? (Not sure we could ever get that genie back into the bottle.) What if we switched to mobile-centric design?

Goals. Not. Methods.

And you said…

Photo credit Dru Bloomfield

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Direct link to the video

“Lucky” is absolutely what I am. Here’s what I do to earn my luck:

• Write a blog post or two a day.
• Write a newsletter every week.
• Comment and connect with others daily.
• Answer and send hundreds of emails daily.
• Read voraciously.
• Work with the best clients I can find.
• Reach into new markets weekly.
• Travel extensively.

Seems lucky to me.

People always ask which camera I used to shoot my video. I use the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 (that’s a review of the camera).

If you can’t see the video, click here

Direct link to the video

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