We’ve had over 100 people register for the Blog Challenge so far. And the MeetOurMembers.com site is filling up quickly! Plus, I’ve gotten a ton of great comments and questions, so I know this will be a great experience for everyone who participates.
So why haven’t YOU signed up yet? Let’s consider a couple of “excuses” you might have.
“I don’t have time” - if you could promote your business, get more traffic to your blog AND have fun doing it, would you? Of course! I estimate it will take you from 30 minutes to an hour a day, for 30 days. If that’s too much time to dedicate to your business – you may want to ask if you’re in the right business.
“I can’t write that much” – 150 words is not much and that’s all you need for a blog post. In fact, I already have over 150 words here – and that’s not much! So maybe you need to remove that limiting belief and join us!
“I don’t have any ideas” – I doubt this is your excuse BUT just in case – find 30 PLR articles on your topic, then just rewrite each of them.
“I’m taking a vacation” – we all take time off. Even if you’re gone for a week or two, your business needs to keep working. That’s when you pre-schedule blog posts and tweets and hire a teen to retweet for you.
So what’s YOUR excuse? If I haven’t covered it here, just add a comment below and let me know what’s holding you back. I WANT you to join us – it’s gonna be a ton of fun! And you want to be there with us.
You CAN sign up later – but it’s always fun to get in at the start. So do it today!
Related posts:
“It’s my birthday”
“Don’t know how to pre-schedule blog posts”
“I spend all my time on Twitter”
“I spend all my time reading e-mails”
“I spend all my time commenting on blogs like this”
Hey, there’s 5 comments – please continue posting, I’m doing my part.
Great excuses! Thanks for those. Let me offer a few ideas…
“It’s my birthday!” – Happy Birthday! You’ll love spending an hour of it with your new friends here at the Blog Challenge. Or if you’d rather not, why not pre-schedule your blog post for the day.
“I don’t know how to pre-schedule blog posts.” – No problem. Just save your article as a draft, then use QuickEdit to set the date and time you’d like for the article to appear. You can pre-schedule a year in advance!
“I spend all my time Twitter.” – Twitter is great – in small doses. You probably need to learn to use it in 10-minute segments. Just check & respond to your @ messages. Then search for #blog30 and find a couple of items to retweet. Finally, write a few new posts. Better yet – pre-schedule tomorrow’s tweets with a tool like Socialoomph.
“I spend all my time reading emails” – email is something you should check twice a day – once before lunch – after you’ve written your blog post – and again in mid-afternoon. Learn to sort your emails in 5 minutes or less and respond ONLY to those that need attention (customers and prospects).
“I spend all of my time commenting on blogs like this” – while we love your comments, you want to limit yourself to commenting on 5 or fewer blogs each day. Otherwise, it’s taking away too much time from your other marketing.
Keep those excuses coming! We want to be sure we can answer all of them for you.
Jeanette,
Although I’ve joined the 30 Day Blogging Challenge, my issue is I’m worried about giving away too much free information.
I always want lots of comments on my posts, and my list is trained to comment if I mail them. But if I mail my list each day about the new blog post, I can’t send them to a paid offer.
Plus I’m training them to get lots of free info from me every day without having to buy.
I’ll be on your webinar tomorrow.
Very valid concerns, Robert. I agree – you have to watch what you’re training your list to expect. And obviously you want them to keep buying. So here are my recommendations.
1) Consider setting up a separate blog just for the challenge. If you theme it to one topic (e.g. member sites, webinars, one of your product focuses) it makes it easy to populate with content. AND every post leads back to the main product you’re promoting.
2) Explain to your list that you’re doing the blog challenge (and invite them to join us of course!) and that for this month you’ll be sharing daily information on xyz topics. And you’ll be restricting each blog post to maybe only 10 comments. That will give them incentive to watch for your post of the day. And knowing you, you can post the post of the day AND a teaser for the next day as well as coming in the next week. So they stay on the topic.
3) You could write a series that is going to be a product. So if they keep up with you on the blog they’ll get the first draft of the product free. I’d probably also combine this with “disappearing posts” – so they only have 3 days to read a post or something like that.
4) Regardless of the approach you use, I’d also include a resource box on each article or in-context links to the product you’re talking about.
Hope that gives you some ideas! I know you’ll add your spin and we’ll all be excited about reading your blog!
Jeanette
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Robert Plank, Jeanette Cates. Jeanette Cates said: New from Jeanette:: Blog Challenge Hold-Outs http://jeanettecates.com/blog-challenge-hold-outs/ [...]
I have only one excuse. I didn’t know about it until today.
Well, I’ve fixed that. I just joined.
You’ve covered a ton of bases, Jeanette, on possible excuses not to join the challenge!
The one other excuse I’m hearing from folks is that they’re already “over-committed” at the present time – taking several courses and programs all at once. I tell them I’m currently enrolled in two courses, simultaneously, and I’m unable to attend either one “live” so I schedule time on the weekends to catch up by listening to the replays.
In essence, there really are no excuses.
Melanie
Janette
I am “unofficially” doing the challenge. My blog isn’t really a business blog, but I figure if I can be dedicated to post on my blog every day for 30 days, hopefully I can keep up the momentum. So, I’ve blogged 2 days in a row, though all my posts may not be the minimum 150 words.
My excuse is I started a blog 18 months ago but stopped blogging as some people commented it was spammy.I have a free classifieds site for Australians. I was blogging about what new things were listed on the site for the day. Problem is now I am not sure what I should be writing about in the blog? Hard to start when you don’t know what you are supposed to be writing about?
Melanie – great excuse!
“I’m already overcommitted and don’t have time to do the Blog Challenge.” It comes down to priorities. I’ve been helping people start and grow their online business for more than 10 years – and one of the things I’ve observed is that when someone is “too busy” it generally means they are spending time on the wrong things.
1. Is what you are doing earning you the money you want? If not, you need to change what you’re doing.
2. Is your busy-ness from too much learning – and not enough earning? For some reason people seem to think they need to know how to do “everything” before they do anything. It’s just a delay tactic. You only need to know how to do the ONE thing you’re doing next.
So what’s the NEXT thing you need to do?
1. Set up a blog.
2. Write an article.
3. Tweet about the article to get people to come read your blog post.
4. “Hope” that other people will retweet your article. (That’s where the blog challenge comes in so nicely – there are 200+ people ready to tweet about your blog post to their lists.)
5. “Hope” that other people will comment on your blog so that you can continue to build your traffic and interest in your blog. Again, Blog Challenge participants try to comment on at least 3-5 blog posts per day.
Finally, there’s the “connection” factor. You’ll find a waiting group of new acquaintances who will become friends over the next 30 days.
Join us!
Amy – Let’s get official! Go ahead and register for the Blog Challenge. As long as you’re doing the work – get the credit. Besides, you’ll love being a part of the group!
I suspect if you just let yourself “talk” a little more, you’ll hit that 150 word limit. Just relax and be yourself.
So go ahead and register. Write daily. Tweet when you have an article that hits the 150 word guideline. Retweet others’ posts. Comment on other blogs. I can almost guarantee you’re going to make some friends along the way!
And here’s that excuse…
“I don’t have a business blog” – there is no requirement that your blog be about business. Several people are focused on their hobbies. Yes, you’ll make some money if you stick with it and mention related products now and then – but you should probably focus right now on creating content and making connections. The Blog Challenge is a perfect way to do that!
Sheryl – I see your issue. Your site does look pretty commercial.
A lot of us sell things online – but we don’t blog at that same site. Instead we have a blog like this one or many of the others involved in the Blog Challenge – and this is where we talk with people. Yes, we write about products. But we also provide a lot of great information.
So I would recommend you set up a new blog on a separate site. Make it friendly and talk about topics that interest the people you want to attract. THEN if your blog post relates to one of the products selling on your current site – then just link to it from your blog.
You could easily do a series of blog posts on how to sell physical products online through a site like yours. How do they take the photos? What information do they need to provide? What makes one item sell better than another? TONS of things you can write about!
Look forward to seeing you in the Blog Challenge now that we’ve gotten rid of that excuse for you!