It feels good to see the changes happening. A year from now, this blog will be much better in content, the plugins being used, and the amount of traffic it draws.
Can you imagine how good it feels to write that with confidence?
I was sitting at breakfast this morning and thinking about The Marketing Spotlight. Imagine how good it’s going to feel – a year from now – when I have developed a membership site for business owners. In a year, there will be 2,000 subscribers paying a simple $9 each month.
Every member will be getting useful content, have a forum to discuss their issues, and be able to contribute to the site as a guest author. It’s incredibly uplifting to see an article from someone new who is enjoying their successes – just as it’s educational to hear from someone with experience.
Of course, the membership site will be at a different address. I haven’t picked it yet, but it will be a subdomain of either ConradHallCopywriting.com or TheMarketingSpotlight.com.
And how is all of this happening? Glad you asked… 😉
For me, the first step is thinking of the editorial calendar. I don’t know how the neurons connected this, but it occurred to me last night while I was chatting with Yvette.
It fits together…I’ve loaded another blog onto a subdomain so I can experiment with the plugins from Michel Fortin’s site. That takes care of the mechanics.
Out front where everyone can see it, I’m working on the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge. That gives me the chance to tell people about what I’m doing – start creating a buzz. (Are you buzzing? You know, sharing this site with your friends and telling them what I wonderful little garden gnome I am?)
And I’m also developing the editorial calendar for the membership site.
This is something else that occurred to me last night. The editorial calendar is about more than my ideas, and my this and my that. You can bet Chris Brogan or Darren Rowse – or any other expert – will be quite happy to let me take an article or blog post they’ve written and reproduce it for readers. It gives them extra exposure and will create some additional traffic to their sites.
There’s always the option of asking someone to write a guest post, too. Craig Cannings could easily whip up a whole series about how to find, and work with, a virtual assistant.
The exercises for Days 11 and 12 are all about your editorial calendar. (That’s as far as I’ve read – I’m avoiding reading ahead.) And somehow it clicked with me that everything we’re doing – each of us – what we’re doing for our businesses. It isn’t about today – it’s about where you’ll be in 12 months or 15 years or whenever.
Doesn’t it feel good to know you have a hand in developing something useful and good? You get to help me develop a good, useful tool for business owners. Because you’re leaving comments (and please include your website – I’ll have the “add your URL” plugin working soon) I can visit your website to give you comments and suggestions, too.
On top of that, because I’m working through the plugins and seeing how they work, we all get to learn from that process. Yes, there will come a time when I’ll pull all that content off this blog and move it into the membership site. Maybe the way I’ll do it is to segment this blog – make some of it for members only and leave the rest public. Since I don’t know how to do it, yet, I also don’t know exactly how it will get done. 😉
Can you see how this all fits with The Slight Edge, and what Seth Godin and David Meerman Scott talk about?
A little bit of progress every day – The Slight Edge.
Giving away the content now to create more traffic, more visitors, and get people talking about how useful the information is. I’ll be building a tribe and reaching out to new people.
A year from now, you’ll have months of experience with the site. You’ll know I’m working steadily to produce useful content – stuff you can put to use today, and it’s easy to do. You’ll have seen my commitment to constant improvement, and willingness to use your suggestions and comments.
So when the membership site goes live, you’ll already know it’s worth investing the time and the money to be a part of that site.
All of this is coming out of taking time to think about the editorial calendar. It’s amazing.
Be part of something amazing. Tell your friends about this blog, and tell them I want to know what they’re thinking. How can we make this a better, stronger, more useful community?
Thanks for reading. And be sure to leave a comment today.