What a Strange Few Days It’s Been
If there is one thing I’ve learned in my 10 years of copywriting, it’s that you can never quite predict what’s going to produce modest results… and… what’s going to take off like a bullet from a gun.
I’ve written plenty of pieces that have pulled in customers and produced a decent profit. Likewise, I’ve written plenty of articles and blog posts that have generated a fair number of readers and comments.
But every now and then I’ll write something that shoots the moon.
This week was one of those weeks.
On Tuesday I published a critique of a space ad. I titled it “93% of Copywriters Agree: This Ad Sucks.” Immediately, readers new and old began to pummel that page.
So the following day, Wednesday, I wrote a follow-up post. I titled it “Bonobos Employee #2 Demonstrates the Right Way to Respond to Criticism.”
Why did I write this post one day later? Because the comments in the first post were quite good. I thought they were worth sharing.
But there was another reason…
Anytime you create a stir in the market, you will know it. When you notice that you’ve done so, it’s important to capitalize on the attention you’ve generated.
In other words: If your readers are clearly interested in a subject, then write more about that subject.
Since writing these two posts, they’ve already become two of the most popular posts I’ve ever published. You can see this for yourself by looking at the list in the sidebar that says “Most Popular.”
As you can see, the two posts are (as of this writing) the 5th and 6th most popular posts on this blog.
I find this quite amazing because they’ve only been published for 48 hours. It’s even more amazing when you consider there are right now 448 posts that I’ve published.
This morning when I logged onto my computer, I could not pull up my blog. Apparently, the surge in traffic had caused my hosting company to start throttling my bandwidth.
So my site was throwing off database errors. “Error establishing database connection,” it kept telling me.
(If you were affected by this, my apologies.)
Yesterday I bought Drayton Bird’s “leap year” offer, which was $35 for an ebook titled “How Even a Business Idiot Like Me Made a Million or Two.” I printed it out and began reading it this morning as I ate two fried eggs and drank my coffee.
In this ebook, Drayton relates how he got into business in the late 1970s at the age of 40. He shares lessons he learned along the way, as well as the factors that contributed to his success.
One of the factors that he mentions early on is “being in the right place at the right time.” Having had my fair share of failures and successes, I can say this is true.
Being in the right place at the right time is often a major contributor to the success of just about every endeavor, whether it be a marketing promotion, a new business, or even a simple blog post.
Of course, you can do some things that will improve your chances of being in the right place at the right time. Drayton points out that being observant will help. To know what is going on and what its impact will be.
Another thing that will help is being consistent at whatever it is you do. Don’t do it once in a while. Do it every day. Then, when the right time arrives, you will be there standing ready.
-Ryan M. Healy
