5 Lessons Cats Teach Us about Creating Blissfully Mindless Content
Wouldn’t it be great if all you had to do to get people to pay attention to your blog was to climb into a cardboard box and play with some string?
It works for cats. Collectively, the cat videos on YouTube are more popular than… well… everything.
And it’s totally not fair, right?
Nothing is more frustrating than spending hours writing a thoughtful post, only to get ignored because everyone is too busy watching a cat play the keyboard. And yet, it happens all the time.
Is it wrong to want to actually teach people something? Is all that hard work creating educational content just a waste of time?
Well, I don’t think so. If I did, I wouldn’t be writing this post.
At the same time though, I believe all the cat videos are trying to teach us a very important lesson:
read more7 Ways to Fascinate Your Readers and Build a Hugely Loyal Following
Are you spellbinding?
Let’s be honest.
It’s a huuuuge challenge.
Probably the biggest challenge each blogger faces.
Because your readers suffer from many distractions.
Social media. Email. Other blogs. TV. Radio. Phone calls. Texts. A car driving past. People talking. Music.Thoughts popping up.
How the hell can you keep your readers spellbound?
How can you keep your readers glued to your content until your last sentence?
How can you keep them yearning for more?
It’s not easy.
But you can learn how to master the art of being fascinating. Enchanting. Captivating. Almost mesmerizing.
How?
You just need to understand the triggers to being fascinating. Once you apply these triggers, your readers will hang on to every word you write.
read moreWhy Your Blog Is Going Nowhere (and the Truth about Getting Traffic)
Note from Jon: This is a post by Johnny B. Truant. Aside from being a close friend, he’s also one hell of a writer, and I don’t say that lightly. You should listen to everything he says, both here and on his own blog. In fact, do yourself a favor and grab his How to Be Legendary e-book. It’s free, and you can dissect everything he’s doing to learn the proper way to succeed online. Worth every minute.
Ever feel like your blog is stuck in quicksand?
You’re writing lots of posts. You’re promoting them. You’re responding to each and every commenter like they’re your best friend.
But it’s not working. The more you work, the harder you struggle, the deeper you sink.
Why?
Well, it might be a little tough to swallow, but here you go:
You could suck at writing.
That’s not the only reason people fail. Some people are just lazy, thinking it’s going to happen without doing any work. Other people never learn how to promote their posts. Still others are totally anonymous, and they need to improve their connections before they can succeed.
But there are also bloggers who do all of that right, and they’re still stuck.
They are working their butts off, doing everything imaginable to promote their blogs, and they’re even networking masters who know everybody, but they’re still failing. And it’s because they suck at writing.
Think about that for a second.
You build it and they come … but it sucks, so they leave.
And another potentially great blog bites the dust.
read moreHow to Be Unforgettable
Can I tell you my worst nightmare?
I’m lying in bed in a nursing home, sick and dying, gasping for breath, knowing that any minute now I’ll be passing into the great beyond. And I’m scared, really, really scared, because I’m all alone, and I don’t know what’s going to happen, and oh God, it hurts so much…
But then it stops. My body goes limp, my last breath rattles from my lungs, my bowels release, and the heart monitor beside the bed flat lines, loudly proclaiming the end of the great and mighty Jon Morrow.
A few moments later, a nurse walks into the room, checks my pulse, and looks at her watch. She writes down my time of death on a form, pulls the sheet over my head, and goes back to her office, where she calls the morgue. A day or two later, I’m cremated with five other bodies, all of us too important to even get our own urn.
And the worst part?
The next day, the sun comes up. The birds are singing. People eat breakfast, go to work, attend meetings… and nobody even notices I’m gone. The great wheel keeps on turning, and for better or worse, I’m forgotten. Goodbye cruel world, nobody gave a damn about me after all.
Scary, isn’t it?
Just writing it down gives me the willies.
It’s not just dying, although that’s certainly gruesome. It’s being forgotten. Down deep, I believe all of us have a primal need to be remembered, to pass something on to future generations, to leave some mark on the world saying, “I was here.”
If we’re being honest, I think maybe that’s one of the reasons many of us start blogging. There’s something immensely comforting about knowing your thoughts are out there for the whole world to read. You could kick the bucket tomorrow, but your words will live on, teaching, inspiring, and taking root in the minds of readers for generations to come.
Or at least that’s the idea.
What really happens, of course, is that you pour your heart and soul into a post, and no one seems to care. No comments, no links, no nothing. Come on over, friends, and check out my blog. We’re watching my ideas die in real time. Yuk, yuk, yuk.
And it’s disturbing.
When you pull up your blog, and you see it says “0 comments” next to every post, you feel like nothing has changed. Once again, you’re slipping through the cracks, passing into oblivion, one more nobody with a stupid little blog, God save your soul.
The good news?
It can change. You just have to realize your writing by itself isn’t a magic key to immortality. If you want that, you have to be unforgettable. You have to touch people so deeply, connect with them so powerfully that your ideas are burned into their minds.
Here’s how:
read more14 Devious Tactics for Getting More Comments on Your Blog Posts
You have a lot to be proud of, you know.
Most folks who start a blog quit within a few weeks, their dreams of fame and glory crushed by a cold and uncaring world who doesn’t give a damn what they think.
But you?
You hung in there. You kept writing. You’re even managing to get a little bit of traffic.
And you’re pleased with your progress. Rightfully so.
The only problem:
You’re not getting many comments.
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