One of the big "issues" for a lot of people on the internet is how do I become a success? How do I become the best? How do I beat the competition? But, you know, it is not that hard, unless your definition of success is to be "bigger than Google".
Success is an elusive thing. No matter how big you are, you will always feel that you are not as successful as you could have been. For instance, do you think Microsoft, the king of the software world, see them as a success? Do you think Google think they are as successful as they could be?
Recently one of Google's founders (I cannot remember which one) said "we have a long way to go". Here we have one of the fastest growing and biggest companies in the world. They want to be bigger, to be better and to grow even further. To them, success is still something they have not yet achieved.
And you know what? I bet that is exactly how you feel about your blog. You don't see yourself as a success - yet.
Focusing on being successful is probably the quickest way to become unhappy. Because being successful is always being bigger than what you are now. And even when you reach your success criteria most people rarely even recognize it.
The worst thing you can do is to compare yourself to the top blogs or sites on the planet. I will bet that most of you occasionally go to Alexa or Technorati to see the top 100 sites in the world. I have done that many times and I have always felt miserable afterwards.
Comparing yourself to the top sites of the world is completely irrelevant. It is like comparing yourself to the top 10 richest people on the planet.
Your site is probably already a much bigger success than what you might think. My bet is that your site is already in the top 1000 of the biggest sites. Not of all the sites in the world, but of all the sites in your market - your niche.
Imagine you are running a site about plane spotting, in Swedish, and you got 130 unique visitors per day and about 600 per month. If you compare yourself with the biggest sites on the planet this would mean that you have a tiny site, with almost no traffic at all. You have much less traffic in a month than what Google has per second. It is an Itsy-weenie-tiny site compared to the top 1000.
But, your market is not the total population of the planet. It is a very small group of Swedish amateur plane spotters. And since you got 600 visitors per month, your site is actually the biggest and most successful plane spotting site in Sweden. Your site is a huge success. You totally dominate your niche of the market. You are the king of your world - and yet, because so many people compare their site with the top 1000 blogs, they never even realize it.
Your failure to feel successful comes not from the results that you are making, but instead that you measure yourself against an irrelevant competition.
If you want to feel successful, make sure that you look at how you are doing in YOUR world - not in other people's worlds.
There where two interesting stories this week about emerging digital markets. First, we heard from Amazon that the sale of ebooks has now surpassed the sale of hardcover books.
It is not unusual for many websites to lose 20-50% of their traffic during the hot summer months. It happens every year, because people rather want to be outside with their friends, having fun barbecuing, than sit inside in front of a computer.
Gatorade has released a video of their social command center. It is quite impressive, and ultra-geeky. It looks more like something from Norad, than anything you would expect from a soft-drink company.
You might have heard the stories about Digg losing 50% of its traffic in just one month, based on data from Compete.com. They are all asking the same question. Is Digg dead? (no it isn't)
I was watching several of video from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce - or simply the RSA. Besides having a YouTube channel filled with interesting content, they have created some of the best story telling videos I have ever seen.
Traditional marketing is pretty simple. You ask your graphic designer to create a beautiful presentation of your product. Next, you give a magazine a handful of money to buy exposure to a certain amount of people. That’s it. You create an ad, pay money, and get exposure.
Isn't it odd that so many companies fight change instead of embracing it? Shouldn't we welcome it with open arms? See it as huge opportunity to get ahead of our competition?
Companies are constantly trying to come up with something new and exciting, but most of the time they to tend to focus on the wrong thing. Instead of creating a story, they make a book. Instead of creating interesting articles, they created a printed magazine. Instead of making remarkable products, they design a new website.
Privacy is a big topic online, and there are many different opinions about it. But all the privacy problems can be summed up into one simply rule that cannot be broken.
Not a day goes by without someone talking about security issues on Facebook and Twitter - and how scary that world is for companies. Recently, we heard about a phishing attack on Twitter, and Sophos posted a graph showing Facebook to be a really scary place.
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