When people owe me things (examples: status of a project, document that they promised to send) but I don’t hear back from them on the due date, I get a bit confused.
Here is my dilemma.
I don’t know if
* They have completed the task but forgot to send me a note OR * They had a problem completing the task OR * They forgot about the task OR * They are waiting for more information from me OR * They didn’t know that THEY were supposed to do the task OR * There is something else that I don’t know.
I checked with a few other CEOs to see if they face this problem. Their answer - “Many times”!
Having been in leadership positions for more than a decade, I know that when I don’t get the “progress” report on time, the reason is mostly because there was no “progress” to report. I guess I would like to know even when there is no “progress”. May be a “No Progress” report?
Action Item:
How about taking an inventory of all your projects today. If people are expecting a progress report but you have no progress report, how about sending them a “No Progress” report and remove their stress a bit. They can deal with the situation better if they at least know that there was “no progress”.
The blog posts provide a sneak preview of what will be covered in the
book. Of course, as you all know, the book will take a life of its own.
I have a dream team of friends who have offered to help with all
aspects of publishing the book. So I am quite excited.
I would love to hear your ideas, thoughts, inputs related to the blog
posts or the book. You can click on the email link above and send me an
email. Please mention whether you want to be notified about the
progress of the book or when the book is published or both.
Blogging is transformational. Ask any serious blogger if they have changed since they started blogging and I am sure most of them will concur.
When you know that you need to be writing, you start observing more and thinking more. When you start getting serious traffic, you start worrying (in a good way) about your identity and start doing something about it.
If you are serious about blogging, be ready to get transformed.
42. Your blog can change who your readers are
If you write a quality blog, your long-term readers are bound to change in some way. I have been fortunate to follow the blogs of my heroes and I have been transformed. I owe it to them and they know that.
I have been blogging for more than 30 months now and have posted about 850 articles on variety of topics. Whenever I get an email or phone call about what my blog means to someone, it re-energizes me to blog more. I have thought of quitting blogging several times in the last thirty months. Just when I was about to pull the plug, I get an email or a phone call or someone somewhere writes about my blog and I quit my thoughts about quitting blogging
Remember that you may be transforming lives of strangers that you may never meet in your lifetime. Not all the people that benefitted from your blog may reach out to you. You don’t have to expect it either. Just know that it may be happening and it’s a good thing.
43. Blogging can make a serious impact on your personal brand
I didn’t say that blogging will make a positive impact on your personal brand. Whether it makes positive or negative impact depends on what assessments people make when reading your blog.
I have written about this before. Your blog is not your BRAND. It is only a part of it. It is hard to be a thought leader in the blogosphere and be a jerk in real life. Word somehow gets out about such inconsistencies in life. You can’t make up for your shortcomings in real life with your blog.
Think about the blog as an amplifier of who you are. Good or bad – whatever it is, it gets amplified!
44. Not everyone who should be blogging is blogging
I have met bloggers who think they are special because they are blogging. I can honestly say that most of these bloggers are in a fantasy world.
A large majority of people who should be blogging are not blogging today. They are no less than you. In fact, there are really super smart people who have not got into blogging. We should be fortunate that at least some of them are blogging.
Blogging in itself does not provide you an elevated status. Just like a typical MBA does not automatically provide you an edge. What you do with your blog is what provides the value.
45. Not everyone who is blogging should be blogging
Blogging is not everyone and it can be a distraction to some. If you are someone who started blogging because it is “cool” and are struggling or suffering, you can re-visit your decision and see if blogging is really for you. There may be other ways you can achieve your objectives without the suffering.
They say any kind of publicity is good. Not for someone who is wanting to create an identity of power for the rest of his or her lifetime. In most cases, you are out with one strike – unless you are dealing only with your family members.
My $.02: Treat your blog with respect. It may take you only ten minutes to post something and you can probably write it off. If you have 100,000 readers reading that post spending five minutes each, serious damage is done!
46. There is no one secret recipe to make your blog successful
If I have to pick one, it will be the rule of 3R.
Rule of 3R
Recurrently provide Relevant and Remarkable content.
Even with that strategy, it is hard to win. It is always a combination. So if someone sells a book that is providing you a sure-fire strategy to succeed with your blog, you know what to do.
Your key is to find out what is that combination (currently) in your world. With some trial and error and help, you will be able to figure it out. However, this combination changes as the marketplace changes. So, please be willing to re-design your strategy and evolve.
47. Not all the blogging tips are applicable to everyone
Sometimes “experts” get carried away too. Their personal preferences show up as “tips” for everyone else. Every time you see tips (actually, be it for blogging or for anything else) just think for a moment about the applicability of this advice for your personal case.
The second reason why you should be careful for about “tips” are that “what works for them” may not work for you even when the “tips” are right.
Some tips are applicable at the time when they were first published. They run out of their relevance after some time. In other words, not all tips are timeless. So check out whether those “tips” are applicable “today”. In the world of blogging, things move very fast and you don’t want to be following yesterday’s advice to succeed tomorrow
48. You can make your blog the ultimate leverage engine
Your blog can be an outlet of your thoughts at a particular time or it can be something more. Here are a few examples of what you can do:
* If you are an aspiring author, you can plan, design and author a book using the blog (blook = blog + book)
* If you want to start small, you can first start by publishing an eBook based on a series of your blog posts.
* You can plan your blog to a portal to your life – linking to other places on the web where you have presence.
* You can conduct a blog carnival and invite participation from bloggers around the world for articles on a particular topic.
* You can generate leads to your other businesses or get speaking requests via the blog
Whatever you are getting out of your blog today, you can get more with some effort online (doing things on your blog) and offline (doing something about your identity)
49. Blogging can seem like a thankless job
Imagine the scenario:
* You have been blogging for a while. * You are recurrently provide remarkable and relevant content (follow the 3R rule) * You post regularly. * Your subscriber base is growing * The traffic on your blog is increasing steadily
However, you feel like there is no tangible benefit or “progress” that you can touch and feel. In other words, you feel like you are doing a “thankless” job.
I have heard such comments from many bloggers who wanted to give up just as they didn’t get any “feedback” to justify continue blogging.
Here are a few things to remember:
* Not all of your readers will write an email or comment on your blog. Want proof? Just think about how many blogs and books you have read and how many emails have you sent to those authors even when you liked the book or blog?
* Good content or interesting content is not what gets thanked. It has to be outstanding or remarkable and way above the market standards for such content out there. It may be your best piece of writing but in the blogosphere, it gets compared with writings from several bloggers in the same category.
* Until you reach the tipping point, the returns from your blog is not something that you can count in. Once your blog tips, returns can be huge.
Last but not the least, remember this:
With your blog, you may have infinite reach. That may mean nothing as the readers out there have an infinite choice. Naturally, superior returns are reserved for outstanding works only!
50. Blogging will increase your capacity to do more good
Imagine you are running a newspaper. Would you be willing to give some real estate on the newspaper to a charitable cause once in a while. You probably would. Well, your blog is a media asset – whatever be the readership. A simple way to do good is to reserve some real estate on your blog to a charitable cause. Here are a few more ways to do something good and meaningful:
* Provide a voice to people who are trying to spread a good message (eg: global warming) * Dedicate part of the proceeds from your blog to your favorite charity * Invite people with great messages to write guest posts * Announce your own affiliations to charitable causes. Some of your fans may decide to support it too. * Announce your own participation in events for important causes.
To summarize it simply, if you have to remember only three things, here they are:
1. Your blog can change who you are 2. Your blog can change who your readers are 3. Your blog can change the world!
31. Not only is blogging addictive, blogging stats are addictive too…
Blogging can be addictive. Checking blogging stats can be addictive too.
Imagine you were fascinated with a video game. At first, it is hard to clear level one. Once you clear level one, you want to go to the next level. After that, to another level. Then to another level.
Blogging game is similar but except there is no clear top level. You can keep on going for a long time – fascinated by the growth (or no growth) of the traffic on your blog. There are many things to be fascinated about blog traffic
* where are the visitors coming from * what are they reading * where are they clicking through (as they go out) * how are they finding your blog (search terms)
One clear reason you can be carried away with blogging stats is the “surprise” factor associated with it. Think about it -
* Which of your posts get popular? * Which posts get linked most? * Which posts get the most number of comments?
There is no way to predict the above or a dozen other questions. You can be pleasantly surprised or disappointed. Nothing is certain. The only way to find out is to keep watching the traffic
32. Barring exceptions, older posts are considered dead
Posts in a news site have a short shelf-life for obvious reasons.
I have been a big proponent of creating “timeless” content – meaning content that stays relevant for quite some time. That is only the first step. Just as you won’t go past a few pages of search results when you are searching something, don’t expect your audience to keep browsing back to the day you wrote the first blog post. Posts go dead faster than you think.
There is hope though. Think about what you can do creatively to ensure that some of your best posts stay alive. Here are a few ideas:
1. Create a section for the most popular posts and highlight them
2. Create categories to organize your posts
3. Create a series of posts and number them. If some posts in the series create an interest, chances are that readers will seek out other posts in the series.
4. Create lenses with a topic where you are an expert and link to all relevant posts on your blog.
5. Publish a manifesto on changethis.com with excerpts from your favorite posts for a topic.
Invent your own ways to keep the posts alive.
Fair warning: Don’t try to trick your readers by linking to posts that waste their time. Link back to high-quality posts only. Otherwise, it will hurt you more than it will help you.
33. Variety helps; too much variety hurts
Imagine a speaker who speaks with a monotonous voice from beginning to end of his speech. That can be boring. That won’t work, right?
You seek some variety.
On another extreme, imagine a speaker who, in the middle of his speech starts dancing and singing that have no connection to his speech. That won’t work either
Some variety is good. Too much variety (especially if it is incoherent) hurts.
Blogging is no different. When you blog, think that you are on a stage and talking to a set of people. They need variety. But not too much.
34. Blogging is personal
Blogging is more personal than creating a book. The audience expect to discover your personality through your blog. If the content is the king, the emotions associated with every post will be the queen. A good combination is desired.
Look at the last few posts. Do they represent you – do they say who you are. If not, go back and add some emotions into them. Bring out your personality in each of you posts.
Consider the act of writing a blog post – it may take you only a few minutes from start to finish. Contrast this with the publication of a book. A decent effort with the book is at least an year-long affair. It goes through several rounds of changes and editing before the script is finalized.
Which one is more personal – you be the judge.
35. Traffic is not the only metric of success in blogging.
Actually, if you just go after traffic, you may do some things that you might regret later. Your have to define your goals for blogging based on your needs not based on what someone else has done.
Here are some reasons why people are blogging: * get more leads for their business * to secure speaking engagements * to promote their books * to park their thoughts for future books * to extend their personal brands * to build new relationships * to extend their company’s reach * to share their expertise to the world and so on.
Think about your own life goals and see how blogging fits in it. If it does not, but you are just trying to fit it in – because everyone around you are doing it, at least know that this is what you are doing
36. Name of your blog matters
Not much if you are celebrity. Otherwise, choosing the wrong name may “box” your blog.
For example, it is hard to write about anything other than Java if the name of your blog is “Java Only” or “Java Unleashed”. It would be out of place to write about training cats on a blog titled “All about Dogs”.
You can always change the name of the blog. However, it costs to make a name change (be it a company or a person or a blog) and you should be willing to pay that price. Rather than that, think carefully before you pick the name and the associated URL for your blog.
Here are two simple steps:
1. Assume that you won’t be changing the name of your blog for the rest of your life. 2. Once you decide on a name, think about what will people think when they hear the name of your blog.
Is this what you want? If not, go and re-visit the name again
If you already have a blog name but you are not happy about it, better change it today. The longer you operate a blog with a wrong name, harder it gets to change it.
37. Create tipping points for your blog
Unless you have a huge personal brand before you started the blog, don’t expect your blog to be an instant success. Every time you hear an “instant success” story for a blog, look at who was behind that blog and how long they worked hard to create their identity before they started the blog.
For the rest of us, we got to create our own tipping points for our blogs. In simple terms, the tipping points are those circumstances that will lead to the proverbial hockey stick growth for the blog.
Personally, for the first few months, my blog would get only a few hundred page views a day – most of them from my friends and family. Here are a few things that helped me take my blog to the next level (not in any order)
What could be the tipping points for your blog in the next few weeks or months?
38. You can get carried away sometimes
When you are just getting started, you have a ton of ideas. Ideas are easy as long as you don’t have to execute on them. Execution is the real culprit. Here are some examples:
* You might want to start a separate blog for every area of your expertise * You might want to start a separate blog for every book of yours * You might want a separate audio-blog * You might want a separate video-blog
You get the point. If you don’t play the full scenario – for the next few years, you might be setting yourself up for failure. Any new initiative takes time. And, blogging – it takes more time as you go along. If you are successful, it takes you more time than ever – as you have to live up to progressively higher standards that the marketplace sets for you.
So, before you get carried away on the multitude of blogging initiatives, think again!
39. Set time aside for your blog fans
When you speak in public, at the end of the talk (provided you spoke well) people will come and talk to you – ask you questions, clarify things and share their personal experiences. It is your time to interact with your fans.
Blogging is different. Some people are not comfortable writing comments on your blog. They may send you an email or two. Unless the request is unreasonable, you are expected to interact with them. If you don’t have time to respond, people will think you are a operating a broadcasting station rather than a blog.
All it requires is to add a small percentage of time that you are setting aside for your blogging activities. If you are spending 50 minutes in a week to blog, make it 60. If you are spending 300 minutes per week on your blog, make it 330.
40. You can join the discussion but you got have something original to say
One way to get attention is to join an on-going discussion related to a hot topic. Chime in and link to the other relevant blog posts. Trackbacks from those posts will bring you some traffic. However, if you don’t have something original to say to add to the ongoing discussion in a meaningful way, it will hurt you more than it will help you.
Imagine giving free tickets to a movie you know is bad. You make the person feel good for sometime but if he knows that you knew the movie was bad, he or she won’t like you anymore.
Before you invite anyone to your blog, get your house in order. That way, you not only make a good first impression, you will get them to visit again soon.
When you add some original thought to the discussion and raise the level of thinking, you will get noticed. If you just say things like – “What a great post” or “You got to read this” you are not adding much to what is happening.
Remember, when someone “discovers” your blog by some means, it is only “relevant and remarkable” content that will bring them back.
SaaS (software as a service) applications are now a “no-brainer” alternative to many enterprise applications. Consumers and business users both are very comfortable using SaaS applications. In fact, there are many companies that are actively moving their current enterprise implementations to SaaS based offerings. However, there are situations where it would be beneficial to have offline access to parts of the application.
Here are a few examples to demonstrate the usefulness of offlining: 1. Access to your customers, prospects and opportunities on the go. 2. Access to a product configuration engine offline – so that the sales person is empowered to create a quote offline. 3. Ability to provide survey participants an option to fill out a survey offline and sync. Up the answers.
Dekoh is a product that can enable this and more. Here is a quick interview with Vijay Pullur (blog: Software (Ad)venturing) , one of the founders of Pramati (the company behind Dekoh)
1. RS: Vijay, you have a fascinating story having founded one of the leading product development companies (Pramati) out of India. Please tell us about your journey so far?
Vijay: I and my brother Jay started Pramati in 1998 in India, goal was to build world-class products leveraging India’s strengths namely low-cost and great talent availability. The journey has been very satisfying and exciting one. We have built products that out-perform the biggest and best names in the industry. Our flagship product Pramati server competes with products from BEA, IBM and Oracle. Our recent product Dekoh is in RIA space, competing against Adobe’s Apollo product. We have two simple goals
1. Build products that our customers love. 2. In the markets we compete we should be innovating faster than our competitors.
That gives us a kick. We are very proud of it.
2. RS: What is the need for a product like Dekoh in the marketplace today?
Vijay: Dekoh is a Rich Internet Application and Social Media platform on the desktop. Today desktop and web applications work as silos. Look-n-Feel, installation, access and technologies used to develop these applications are very different. Dekoh bridges the gap between desktop and the web. The “Rich” in RIA refers to richness in user interface (Flash and AJAX), richness in functionality (desktop and web) and richness in availability (online and offline). Providing a seamless user experience for applications on desktop and web in both connected and disconnected mode is the goal. This is the next frontier for internet applications.
3. RS: Adobe has Apollo and Google just announced Google Gears. How does Dekoh compare against these offerings?
Vijay: There are several approaches to solving the problem. Each one attacks the problem from their natural strengths. Adobe Apollo is a runtime that allows developers to applications on the desktop using web technologies like HTML, AJAX and Flex.
Dekoh supports these and more web technologies like JSP, Servlets on the desktop. The key difference are in 2 areas. Web has moved on from 1.0 to 2.0, supporting just HTML, AJAX and Flash is not enough. Dekoh addresses this hole which Adobe has left. Dekoh is a social media platform on the desktop bringing web 2.0 functions like sharing, tagging, commenting, rating and RSS to the desktop. The second difference is Apollo applications run outside the browser, more like desktop applications. We at Dekoh believe that users are very familiar and they like using browser as the client and that should be honored. Dekoh applications run inside the browser.
Now talking about Google gears, it is about making certain functionality of web applications offline by re-writing them. It is not a desktop platform. For example Google gears application cannot show you local filesystem to pick a directory. Google gears is targeted at more Javascript heavy applications.
4. RS: You mentioned about offlining parts of a SaaS application for one of your clients. What was the need and how did Dekoh fit in there?
Vijay: Thanks to the torch bearer Salesforce.com. SaaS applications have become mainstream in enterprises. Unfortunately, world has not moved that fast to provide ubiquitous anywhere/anytime internet connectivity. Depending on the nature of the job connectivity varies. People who travel very frequently are the worst hit. Due to this access and availability of SaaS applications become intermittent. Dekoh has developed several key components to partition application and data of SaaS applications and to install the application on users desktop in one-click. Once this is done, the user continues to access the application and modify the data in a disconnected offline mode. We have a sync module that will synchronize data back to central server when the desktop connects back. The utility and user experience for SaaS applications get significantly enhanced with such offline functionality.
5. RS: Why should developers be excited about your platform?
Vijay: Dekoh is a open source platform. It is built using open technologies like Java, AJAX etc. It is very easy for developers to write applications on Dekoh. No new technologies or tools need to be learnt in order to write applications on Dekoh platform. As an icing on the cake Dekoh brings in exciting web 2.0 features to the desktop, developers can write applications and show them off to their network of friends and family right from their computers.
6. RS: Life is going on fine without Dekoh or Apollo or Google Gears. Some people may say you have a solution waiting for a problem. Your comments?
Vijay: Think about it, people said the same about telephones! I am not saying Dekoh is comparable in proportions to that, but Dekoh offers some unique features that can dramatically improve web experience of users. Offline is only one part of the story. The bigger thing about Dekoh, is it can change the request-response model of the web. For example, today users have to manually click to go to a website and look at new information or use the service. Dekoh can help users make time on the internet more productive by pulling content on their behalf. For online services, this is a platform to provide valuable user specific information even when the user is not on their site. This is a new paradigm.
7. RS: What were the challenges in developing this product? Now, that the product is out, what are the challenges you are facing in bringing it to the marketplace?
Vijay: The biggest challenge for us was to package technology components into an end-user friendly, zero maintenance bundle. Once we got past this hurdle, we are seeing so many possibilities of putting this technology to use. The challenge ahead of us is much tougher one, to showcase and tell the story to the audience. To build a larger community of users and developers.
8. RS: On the product front, you seem to be ahead of both Apollo and Google Gears. However, the other products are from Gorillas in the marketplace. How do you plan to compete with the size? What kind of help are you looking from the community (developers and users)
Vijay: Yes. We are well ahead of the competition. With all things we are currently working on, I am confident the gap is going to get wider. I agree we are the David fighting the Goliath. Technical superiority, innovation, nimbleness and most importantly our openness (open standards based technology, open source software and open mind to listen to our users) has started to create the positive word of mouth. It is just matter of time when mindshare is going to overtake muscle power (think what was Google when they launched their search engine).
We have created a platform that developers can use to write applications without learning any new proprietary technologies or tools. Whatever they write on the desktop can be shared and shown to their friends network. We want to hear from developers their experiences to enhance the platform. We have created several personal media applications for end users to use. We hope people enjoy organizing their media, sharing with friends. Any new ideas for applications can be shared on new ideas forum on www.dekoh.org, some developers may pick up the idea and turn it into reality. Dekoh gallery will showcase applications.
9. RS: What is in the horizon for Dekoh? Where are you planning to take this Vijay?
Vijay: We have tried to create useful value to developers by opening the platform. We have written several media and utility applications for end users to use and enjoy networking with their friends. We will continue to build on this. Dekoh is a good platform for online services/websites to create a desktop presence. Similarly, SaaS applications can leverage our platform to make their services available anywhere/anytime (literally).
Every significant leap in your growth happened because you stretched beyond your limits. The question therefore is – “Are you stretching in the areas that you wish to grow or are you complacent and WISH that you grew?”
Enjoy the quote.
“Of course we all have our limits, but how can you possibly find your boundaries unless you explore as far and wide as you can?”
I love good questions. I have loved them all my life. One of my friends tells me that I don’t have good answers for anything and that’s the reason for my love of good questions. Thinking about it, it’s probably true.
Coming to the point, I have updated my Squidoo lens – The Power of Questions after a week’s worth of work. I am happy about it and I hope you will be too.
Obviously, please don’t expect any answers going to the lens. There are none. What I can guarantee you is that the collection of questions (from some of my most thoughtful friends) will make you THINK. There must be close to hundred questions in the lens. My request is to not rush through the questions in one sitting. Please read through a few questions and think about them. Discuss them with someone close to you. Explore!
Remember that encountering ONE good question can change the direction of your life for good.
Dekoh
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