Connecticut, USA
Every blogging statistic is dead and buried in the past.
Every widely-held metric is over.
Every industry stat quote is gone.
Few bloggers understand this: the stats that you quote, follow, judge, condemn and take as gospel are dead, buried, past and have absolutely nothing to do with the present or future.
If you look back in your mind you will repeat the past in your mind again and again like the movie Groundhog Day.
If you look back in your mind you will also tend to trip in the present and the future. How can you see where you’re going while looking backwards?
Almost no blogger realizes this because they base their current strategy on PAST statistics based on RESULTS OF OTHER BLOGGERS.
Think it through. Millions of bloggers achieved specific results. Bloggers reference these results as benchmarks, goals, something to strive for. Everyone nods. Virtually no one thinks:
“Why in the hell do I handcuff myself with the averaged results of a blogging pool from 5 or 10 years ago?”
Maybe no other established blogger thinks this way AND blogs about it. I do. I have for a fairly long time. But now is the time for the world to receive this guidance so bloggers can stop shackling themselves with the past, long dead and buried, and the results of other bloggers.
No vision exists with this past-dead-buried strategy. No freedom exists either. How can you be free if you shackle yourself based on numbers from the past? Those days are over. Those numbers are over. Those patterns are over.
Why base your entire strategy on the past when you can add at least a dash of vision?
Vision
Having a vision is seeing a present and future that no one sees. Or that few people see.
Vision never looks back to a dead and buried past because the past is…dead and buried. Done. Over. Morto.
Visionaries innovate. A world with its head up its ass used horses to get around. Henry Ford created a vision of getting around by automobile. Musk’s visions made Western Union and combustible auto engines dinosaurs. PayPal and Tesla made sending money online and charging “fast” cars easy peasy. He did not look back at how people sent money offline or how combustible auto engines worked. He offered a new form of help to advance humanity. Yeah; he also became the richest person in the world during the process.
Past-stat-seekers replay. People look at past numbers and do what brings those numbers quite like a robot. The dead and buried numbers achieved by other bloggers become the benchmark, the goal, the life.
Does that sound sane?
Not to me.
Add some vision to your blogging strategy. Feel free to base some of it on past stats. Check out what seems to be working numbers-wise, if you please. But partially begin to travel away from past stats toward where your intuition guides you. Be a trail blazer. Blog off of the beaten path. At least a little bit. Experiment.
Go where there is massive potential but not granite-like past statistics worshiped and followed by millions of bloggers. Yeah; like social media.
Part of my blogging vision is to gradually guide the chunk of bloggers from 5 billion social users to my profiles and Blogging From Paradise. While most bloggers trip over themselves in the idolatry of Google and list-building – based on past statistics widely accepted as gospel of course – I intend to bring blogging and blog traffic in a new direction for the present and future.
Stats prove that Google traffic and email list building may be the 2 most powerful ways to deliver blog traffic. But those stats are from 5 seconds ago, or 5 months ago, or 5 years ago. Bloggers robot-i-cally follow the stats and strategies from 5 years ago instead of at least partially accessing the 5 billion human beings on social media, a less-proven medium.
Who changes the world in a powerful way at a level of scale?
Visionaries who dare to look forward?
Or followers who look backward at numbers who make the illusory comfortable, safe choice?
Should You Ditch Stat-Checking?
No.
But check stats a little less and trust your hunches a little more.
I hope you understand by now that obsessing over statistics keeps you firmly grounded in the past. Not only that, but that past is literally the results of other bloggers, most of whom live in deep unconscious fear, fearing themselves to be victimized by the world, its laws, people in political offices, etc. Those stats are the collective products of folks who are kinda mad as a hatter.
Does that sound like a fun, freeing way to live to your fullest potential? Does looking at the average results of bloggers from a past long gone make for the brightest, most brilliant future for you?
Hell no.
Yet I know that a hefty number of bloggers will reach for statistics as some type of benchmark for what is possible.
Wise Lesson from a Multi-Millionaire Blogger
A big time blogger once professed to owning a teeny weeny email list.
But almost every single human on the list deeply desired his blog content and business services.
Based on past industry stats, the world would judge his list to be a failure because he did not get MORE and had way LESS.
He became a multi-millionaire through blogging because he completely looked past common industry email statistics. This high level blogger did not look back at what other bloggers achieved as far as subs, opens and clicks. He simply created a vision to be truly helpful and decided to build an almost fully-responsive email list of human beings who thirsted for his content and business.
Visionaries do what no one did before. How can you check industry stats if no one “did” those stats? In other cases, these industries literally never existed before the visionary imagined and pioneered the industry. Where was Steve Jobs getting his cell phone stats before dreaming up his vision? Where was Bill Gates getting software stats before dreaming up his vision?
Blogging visionaries may operate in an already discovered industry and may also consult some industry statistics but also do what no other blogger has done before in some areas at least; no stats exist if no other blogger has moved in that direction before.
Leave Looking Cool or Trendy Behind
Being a blogging visionary sure ain’t about looking cool or trendy. Both egocentric drivers lead to you falling flat on your face.
This isn’t about you looking a certain way but thinking, feeling and doing something largely new and off the beaten path that helps everyone.
Creating a vision depends on listening closely to your intuition.
A handful of bloggers use social media specifically to create blogging tips related content on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
I decided to ramp that up by collectively publishing 100 plus pieces of content based on blogging tips on a daily basis.
The vision is bearing fruit….
…and I am just getting started.
