What do you do when you’re “just too tired” and “just don’t want to?”
I’m finding out tonight. What you do in these situations?
Oh the irony of it all
Just this morning I took a call from business friends from Denmark at 6 am. (It woke Beth who rolled over.)
They spoke at my 10x Medical Device Conference for each of the past two years. I asked them if they used the videos I made for them.
They hadn’t.
We spent maybe 40 minutes on the phone. I told them my “Ugly story” and encouraged them to record and share their insights whenever possible.
I told them what Lucia could do with the video.
I told them consistency is important.
Which makes today’s post – written 15 hours after that call – all the more ironic.
A sustainable plan
(Clickable) Credit: R. Crumb, 1967
So tonight, I’m doing precisely what I said I wouldn’t do 40 weeks ago.
About my new Journey, I proclaimed, “Some weeks will be better than others. It’s good we get that out of the way so I don’t have to stress over saying something ‘really smart’ every week.”
I’m not stressed. I’m just tired. Really tired.
And I’ve placed this Coschedule Sword of Damocles over my head. You know, that headline analyzer I’ve mentioned so often?
When I get a bad score, I keep iterating until I get something at least in the sixties, in hopes the subject line will intrigue you to click.
Four thoughts I’m pondering
- Early in my Journey, I think it was Kimberly who told me, “You really don’t have to write every week. Maybe every other week. You’d still be top of mind and you’d halve your work.”
I told her, “Yeah, but I said I would write every week. I don’t want to give up so soon.”
And I thought to myself, I’d like to at least make it a year.
Here, today, I have just 11 more weeks. I can do it. Right?
- Remember “Planet Derek?” I embedded the first of his 2018 daily video logs in a Fast Round.
I stopped watching him every day back in February or March. I wondered today if he was still doing it and what view count he now averaged.
He stopped. His last Planet Derek video was March 5. He committed a daily to his audience which is exponentially larger than mine.
He didn’t even say goodbye. And that last video has twice the views of the previous ones, with comments like, “Where’d you go?” and “So I guess that daily video thing didn’t work out for you.”
Someone else wrote she was “worried about him.”
- You’ll recall my “Midlife Marketing Depression” inspired “The Journey.” And while I no longer feel as though I have nothing to say, I said to Beth tonight,
How many different ways can I say the same thing?
For example, as someone who specializes in marketing communication, I have plenty of examples but the punchline – Be authentic and write something worth reading – arises often.
- I do have stories this week. About LinkedIn. About karma for someone with boorish online etiquette. About a very aggressive stand I made against inefficiency with a new partner.
But you don’t want to hear me complain, whether there are marketing lessons in them or not.
And I’m too tired and preoccupied with client deliverables to devise a clever workaround.
Why I told you all that
I suspect at least one reader out there, perhaps you, admires my weekly journey commitment.
It’s easy on weeks where a story flows from my fingertips, like last week’s “Angry” post. (I predicted a higher open rate. I was right. I got messages from a few people who rarely reply and far fewer unsubscribes than I feared.)
But tonight I just wanted to put blood on my doorpost and let God pass over my house.
And now, 672 words into this post, I realize I’ve made no point at all.
Sorry about that. But if I did make a point, would you write me back and let me know what it was? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Fast Round
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23 delightful minutes with Sir Paul McCartney. If you haven’t seen this, you simply must. It is so intimate.
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You’ve got to use ShrinkPDF.com – because no one wants to be emailed a huge file. And no one wants to open a huge file. Or download a huge file. So try https://shrinkpdf.com.
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When a vague URL works in your favor. So that “Angry” post from last week? I only got nine unsubscribes but they came fast. It gave me an idea.
Recognizing that controversy “sells,” I made the LinkedIn post on the left. It only got four click-throughs.
When I changed from the vanity URL https://medgroup.biz/angry and the hashtage #contentmarketing to a generic LinkedIn URL, the click-through rate significantly jumped.
By the numbers:
4 clicks on 142 views = 2.8% (which is not terrible)
4 clicks on the next 34 (that is, 182 views minus 148 views) = 11.8%, a HUGE jump.
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I might be on international TV this weekend. I’ll be among hundreds of volunteer singers in the Opening Ceremony chorus for the Special Olympics. The event starts this Sunday (July 1), here in Seattle. Look for me!
Thank you for joining me on The Journey.
See you next week – or sooner – if you choose to reply to this email,
P.S. Have you ever read about the sword of Damocles? It’s really interesting, I discovered, when Democles [sic] got the wavy red underline of WordPress disapproval.
