SEO, 마케팅, 카피라이팅은 이 목록에 없습니다.

제가 블로그를 시작했을 때, 저는 글쓰기에 훨씬 서툴렀고 어떻게 글쓰기 사업을 시작해야 할지 전혀 몰랐습니다. 심지어 언젠가 제가 하고 싶어할 수도 있었습니다.

제 글쓰기는 그 초창기 이후로 향상되었지만, 제 사업을 성장시키는데 도움을 준 기술들은 글쓰기와 거의 관련이 없습니다. 이것은 좋습니다: SEO에서 선천적으로 놀랍게 태어나는 사람은 거의 없습니다. 하지만 우리들 대부분은 이런 부드러운 기술을 가지고 있거나 그것들을 발전시킬 수 있는 능력을 가지고 있습니다.

풀타임 콘텐츠 크리에이터이자 프리랜서 작가로 활동한 지난 15개월 동안 글쓰기와는 전혀 상관없는 이러한 8가지 기술은 제가 글쓰기 사업을 성장시켜 월 $8~10,000의 수익을 올리는 데 도움이 되었습니다.

목차( C)

  
 ∘ Being good at names  
 ∘ Spreadsheets and systems  
 ∘ Asking, “Wait, what?”  
 ∘ Being really lazy  
 ∘ Listening to what people mean, not what they say  
 ∘ Pretending luck doesn’t exist  
 ∘ Knowing I’m right, actually, and that commenter can f*ck off  
 ∘ Knowing I messed up  

Being good at names

If you think you specifically are bad at names, I beg you, put that preconceived notion aside. It’s not you. People, in general, are bad at it.

You know what that means? When you’re good at names, you stand head and shoulders above everyone else by default. It’s a superpower. And more importantly, it’s a learnable superpower. People like you more and are more willing to think of you when they have opportunities or ideas if you can do the bare minimum and remember their names.

Plus, remembering someone’s name/child’s name/pet’s favorite treat and watching them light up as you prove that you listen and care is amazing.

I list some techniques in this article, but one of the easiest ways is simply repeating the person’s name. “Hi, Clara, nice to meet you.”

Spreadsheets and systems

I was that kid in school who pulled her crumpled and smudged homework out of her backpack raw. I was that employee who forgot to book the conference room. I was that friend who sent your birthday card late because Facebook only reminded me on the day.

I am not a naturally organized person. This is an unpleasant and stressful way to live. So, I developed a variety of systems and routines that keep me on track.

Organization now helps me run my business. I have spreadsheets on spreadsheets, a physical notebook, an automated calendar, and a bunch of text shortcuts (I recommend aText, which saves me 5 minutes a day at least).

A learned systematic approach worked wonders for my writing business.

Asking, “Wait, what?”

“People actually make money blogging?” I asked myself one day in September 2018 as I sat at my desk job, watching a Jon Morrow webinar during my lunch break.

“How come this article got more views than that one?” I asked myself in September 2019 as I started to gain traction blogging.

“What if I tried to do this full-time?” I asked myself in September 2020, just before I went all-in on my content creation journey.

“How do I build my business efficiently?” I asked myself in September 2021, just before I launched my first PDF product.

Asking questions and, more importantly, having the curiosity to figure out the answers was the first step in my blogging career. It’s also been the step that has helped me pivot more times than I can count. (I am curious on months other than September, but I liked the narrative structure of repeating months.)

Being really lazy

In today’s hustle-huffing, output-obsessed atmosphere, the ability to boldly proclaim, “I would rather not work,” is a verified virtue.

When I first built my business, I did it all myself. I made YouTube thumbnails. I edited my own videos. I designed my own website. I got very tired of it.

Laziness inspired me to:

• delegate tasks I was bad at, or that took me a long time.
• spend some brainpower figuring out the fastest and easiest way to do stuff in the future, like setting up automated systems as much as I could.
• slowed my output of writing down to one article per week, which meant I had to be really confident about each article as I published it.

Laziness breeds efficiency.

Listening to what people mean, not what they say

I took a Peer Support course in college which taught us how to help the people we were close to. Everyone has good intentions, but mostly, people suck at being good friends and need to be taught how.

One of the most lingering lessons I learned was to listen.

I’ve written about bad listeners before, but I want to highlight how good listening helped me build my business.

• I write articles based on listening to what my clients, peers, and audience are really saying. What do they need? What questions aren’t being answered?
• I answer questions and comments by listening to what the commenter is truly asking for. “Why am I not getting views?” usually is something more along the lines of, “I’ve been trying so hard to be a writer and I’m worried this external measure of quality means I don’t have what it takes. How do I keep going?”
• I run individual and group coaching sessions where I can’t just dispense random writing advice — I have to deeply understand the issue each person is having and come up with a personalized way to address it.

Listening is the most valuable skill on this list without question.

Pretending luck doesn’t exist

Not many people know I have two degrees in biology. I don’t use biology-specific skills in my day-to-day (other than to bestow fun animal facts on my friends and family) but I do rely on the habit of assuming everything happens for a reason, even if I don’t understand that reason yet.

At first, I loved to blame or thank the almighty algorithm for my successes or failures. But that didn’t lead to growth. Instead, I grew complacent. I finally got sick of pretending the algorithm just happened to favor certain writers doing better than me and tried to figure out why they were doing better.

Every time I had a question, I used research to determine the answers. (This was also helpful when dealing with failures. The useless question of “Why did the algorithm decide to not let this article go viral?” can turn into the rather more actionable, “Why did this article/content/newsletter not do as well as I expected? How can I improve that?)

This helped me through multiple iterations of improvement:

• How can I get more views on my videos and articles? I learned SEO.
• How can I build my newsletter faster? I analyzed which articles were most effective at getting folks to sign up.
• Which titles perform better? I tested out variants on myself, my cats, my friends and came up with a strategy using my research.
• How can I find additional income sources? I researched LinkedIn, copywriting job boards, and alternative platforms.

Of course there’s an element of luck, timing, and unfair advantages in business. But what’s the use of complaining about it? Instead, I pretend I deserve every negative result I get and use that motivation to figure out how to improve.

Knowing I’m right, actually, and that commenter can f*ck off

I recently had a YouTube video start taking off for all the wrong reasons. In it, I criticized a particular breed of Instagram user — the parents of child influencers who run accounts for their four-year-olds.

One of the most prominent members of that community found it. She blasted the video to her 500,000 followers on Instagram and they came after me. I received ugly hate messages on every platform I have a presence on.

It was enough to make me doubt myself. If so many people were mad at me, maybe they did have a point. But I re-read my article and re-watched my video and realized that I fully stood behind what I had posted.

Many new writers will think it’s easy to create stuff you don’t truly believe in an attempt to get views or build a business. And it is, to start with. But in the long run, it gets you down. You need the ability to stand behind everything you create. You’ll be challenged internally and externally. Courage in your convictions is everything for business longevity.

Knowing I messed up

I’ve published over 600 articles and over 100 videos in the three years I’ve been a creator, so naturally, I’ve done a lot of things wrong. Just as important as knowing when you’re right, even in the face of criticism, is knowing when you’re wrong.

A huge part of my growth as a creator comes from being able to look at myself and my work and say, “Zulie, you can do better.” Or, “That commenter was right, your title was misleading.” Or, “Does this really reflect your beliefs, or are you just after clicks?

Creators who don’t reflect don’t grow. And if you’re not growing, you not building a long-term business.

These soft skills matter more than any technical knowledge.

I didn’t know about SEO, content marketing, digital courses, or even what a call to action was when I started blogging. (If I’d had to guess, I probably would have said it was something you shout to Arthurian knights in the Middle Ages. “Call to action, good sir Segwarides!”)

Now, writing is how I pay my very expensive rent in Boston and keep my cats in Dreamies as they deserve.

As I’ve improved my business skills and my writing skills, I’ve learned that the softer skills I’ve developed my whole life have served me better than knowing the technical skills of publishing to an algorithm, or understanding SEO.

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