Why? Because I didn’t start out with a plan. Conditions have changed a lot since I started in 2002 and a lot of the advice you get today is still based on the old reality. Can blogging contribute to your success? Sure. Will it? Not necessarily.

There are a lot of misconceptions about blogging — it’s simple, easy, and a sure-fire marketing tool. Technically these things are true, but practically it’s a lot tougher than it appears.

Over at DailyBlogTips guest writer Bob Bessette has collected a nice list of the Top 5 Blogging Misconceptions (summarized with my comments below):

• If you write it they will come… No, they won’t. Promotion is key.
  
• People will read because of my great writing. This falls in the necessary but not sufficient category.
• Other bloggers will always be willing to help. Maybe. Usually. Sometimes.
• You will start making money right away. Only if you’re already famous. I used to get a few hundred dollars a year from Google, but it came out to about $0.10/hour. Be sure you know what you’re after.
• It’s easy to blog. Persistence, planning, predictability. After 7+ years I’m still working on these.

Successful blogging takes effort and a plan. Writing, even good writing, is not enough. The quantity of content and competition has grown exponentially. It used to be easy to get linked by “A-List” bloggers. Today — not so much. The technical barriers to entry have crumbled, but the quantitative and qualitative barriers have skyrocketed.

Blogging is like anything else in business — you have to treat it seriously if you’re going to succeed. You need to be clear on what’s required and what you expect to get in return. Bob’s list is a good starting point.

The Federal Trade Commission today announced a law enforcement crackdown on scammers trying to take advantage of the economic downturn to bilk vulnerable consumers through a variety of schemes, such as promising non-existent jobs; promoting overhyped get-rich-quick plans, bogus government grants, and phony debt-reduction services; or putting unauthorized charges on consumers’ credit or debit cards.

The article lists eight (8) early enforcement actions against some high-profile players across a broad range of get-rich-quick niches. Included in the early enforcement actions was TV infomercial regular John Beck/Mentoring of America, which produces “John Beck’s Free & Clear Real Estate System,” “John Alexander’s Real Estate Riches in 14 Days,” and “Jeff Paul’s Shortcuts to Internet Millions.”

Also named was Google Money Tree, for allegedly misrepresenting that they were affiliated with Google and failing to disclose their continuity fee billing.

It’s highly likely that this is just the first of many actions across the get-rich-quick universe, designed to gain some early publicity by tackling a few big hitters. I would not be surprised to see this enforcement trickle down the food chain. Fraud is nothing new, but bad economic times tend to increase the potential market for schemes. Lousy, unethical practices make it harder for legitimate small businesses to use good internet marketing. So I say good riddance to bad practices and let’s see who the FTC focuses on next.

Here’s a video the FTC put together to warn consumers about get-rich-quick fraud:

It does a good job of capturing a lot of information in a simple format. The actual map contained links to several of the sources, which made it even more useful, but it also had a stong visual impact on the audience, and helped us focus on what was important.

Today, looking back at it several years later, the map immediately brings to mind all the key components of innovation we discussed — many of which I would have long since forgotten otherwise.

That’s one of the great advantages of mindmaps — the ability to trigger related thoughts and quickly bring to the surface ideas that might otherwise be forgotten or overlooked.

Mindmapping is a bit like brussel sprouts — people tend to love them or hate them. But what I find mostly is that some people hate creating them, they feel the mindmap process is too cumbersome or freeform. Very few people actually hate a well-done, informative map unless it is too complex, or too crowded to be easily grasped.

For me, mindmaps don’t fit every circumstance, and they don’t suit every purpose. I use them when appropriate. They are terrific at capturing lots of information but, if not groomed and trimmed, can get a bit unwieldy.

Today I use an online mindmapping tool called Mindomo. If you’re interested in trying mindmaps to spur your thinking or memory give it a try.

Recent polls show that only 26% of Americans think the government’s plan to bail out GM is a good idea, and only 42% of GM car owners are even “somewhat likely” to buy GM again. Clearly, most of us don’t think we’re on the right track for fixing this mess. But there are things that can be done, and the industry can survive and progress without massive government meddling, spending, and regulation.

So here’s my 7-step plan for addressing the auto industry/environment/energy situation. Amazingly, there’s not one single step that requires new regulation or money for the auto industry.

1) Don’t try to “fix it now.” It can’t be fixed now, and everything done to make it better now just makes it worse. You can’t mandate this, that, or the other thing because no one knows at this stage what is going to work. And, as we may have finally learned with the bailouts, just throwing billions at something does not fix it.  The big pain associated with surging fuel prices is severely damaging, but it’s the only way we’re going to get people working hard on viable solutions to the energy/fuel problem. Trying to artificially raise fuel prices via taxes is unworkable, because it hurts people for no reason and no benefit when real prices are low, and it blows the lid off when real prices skyrocket (which they will again.)

2) Don’t try to fix it like Europe. This isn’t Europe. You can’t listen to people in countries the size of Connecticut telling you how things should be in the U.S. — where it takes four full days to get from one side to the other. The vast majority of Europeans are completely clueless about what needs to happen here, and so is anyone who proposes Euro-style taxes for us.

3) Create significant income tax incentives for individuals to purchase fuel efficient vehicles. By significant I mean $5,000 or more per year. DON’T tell them what kind of vehicle. DON’T tell them what technology. DON’T tell them what they can and can’t do. DON’T tell them anything, except it must have an EPA rating of more than XX mpg (or equivalent.) Give them the incentive every year they own the vehicle, not just for buying it. Make it a long-term benefit. Stop the incentive when they sell the car – it’s non-transferrable. Raise the MPG requirement every few years until we get it to 50-60 mpg. DO the same thing for businesses, but with lower standards for commercial vehicles that have to tow/haul stuff. Might have to have tiers for this, based on vehicle classification. DON’T give manufacturers a dime. DON’T make any law mandating they make vehicles with certain mileage. Just give people real incentive to buy such vehicles and I assure you the market will figure it out.

4) Create significant incentives for business to build out alternative fuel distribution infrastructure. DON’T tell them what kind of fuel. DON’T tell them what kind of distribution. DON’T pay them anything. DON’T give them any government money. But give them major tax breaks for money they spend to do this. Make all alternatives equal. Anything as long as it’s not gasoline. There is absolutely no sense in trying to ignore fossil fuels and focus on freaking solar cars or hydrogen or crap that’s 50-100 years in the future.

5) Stop assuming that everyone needs to drive a sardine-can econobox. It’s one thing to cram your family into a little econobox for a 30-minute jaunt to the train station or whatever. Entirely another to cram them in like sardines for a 6-hour trip to Grandma’s. You cannot start out with an assumption that consumers here can be coerced into acting like Europeans.

6) Do not try and tell people what to do. Do not start down the road of what is and is not a wasteful activity. What seems “unnecessary” to me may be extremely valuable to you. Whenever you setup judgments about what is and is not “right” to do in this situation you create the potential for enormous backlash and lots of energy wasted on not solving the problem. Just create incentives for what we want to achieve — high mileage vehicles and easy access to alternatives to gasoline. Leave everything else alone.

7) We should never have public-funded works projects, but since the Democrats can’t stop themselves (like drug addicts going to a crack house) at least put the work into alternative fuel distribution infrastructure. I don’t know how, but at least build pipelines or something. Lease them out until they are paid for then sell them.

We badly need a meaningful energy policy that addresses real world issues and not eco-freak bullshit. We need to address energy as a comprehensive whole, not just cars. For example: Hydrogen cars are dumb. I can’t believe this idea is even being discussed. There is no free hydrogen on earth, for pete’s sake, and hydrogen is just an energy carrier — it doesn’t create energy, it just carries it. You get free hydrogen by electrolysis — pumping electricity into water. You get exactly as much hydrogen out as you pump electricity in. You may as well be running your “clean” hydrogen car off a direct connection to coal-fired power plant. The overall efficiency of coal-to-steam-to-turbine-to-powerline-to-hydrogen generator-to-fueling station-to-car is about 20%. Pretty much the same (or worse) than gasoline. Same thing will all these electric cars. Geez.

In 75 years, when you can run your Hydro-car off a super-efficient wind or solar farm, things will be different. But not today.

Even though we should not mirror the Euros, there are a *few* lessons we can learn from them.

We have lousy infrastructure for alternative fuel distribution. In Europe, 50% of the consumer autos are diesel. Modern diesels are as clean (in some cases cleaner) than gasoline engines, produce more power, and get better mileage. A gallon of diesel contains 15% more energy than a gallon of gas, and cost less to refine. Diesels also run on more bio-alternatives than gasoline engines.

But diesels don’t sell in the US because you can’t get diesel on every corner, and the lack of distribution makes it more expensive than gas, even though it’s a lot cheaper to make. Also US manufacturers have, for the most part, built very poor quality diesels and consumers have reacted accordingly. Euros still don’t sell their modern diesels here because the market doesn’t support it.

Same situation with Compressed Natural Gas. CNG is not very efficient in terms of equivalent miles per gallon — it doesn’t carry much energy. But it’s very cheap, abundant, and clean. Again, there is no infrastructure. The market has delivered very poor alternatives for consumer use of CNG.

If we had decent infrastructure you can build efficient vehicles that combine these technologies. Just like the big three are building E85 hybrids (which has caused increasing food prices because farmers now grow crap corn for ethanol instead of food corn for food) you can have clean diesels with CNG or water/methanol that increase mpg of diesel by 5% to 20%. Imagine a “gas-guzzler” truck getting 20-30 mpg on a combination of diesel and CNG, with a lower carbon footprint than the Chevy Impala. Now that’s a viable alternative for the next 10-20 years.

And maybe there are other combinations that work better. But all this stuff has to be convenient and affordable. Give Average Joe a reason and the option to buy something different that is actually a functional equivalent to what he has now. He’s not going from his 4×4 SUV to some sardine can. But he will go from his 9mpg gas burner to a slightly smaller, comparable, version getting 20mpg-30mpg off a mix of alt fuels. As long as he doesn’t have to turn his life upside-down to get the fuels or pay three prices for the vehicle.

Of course, peak oil fanatics will cry about this, claiming “That won’t help! It just delays the inevitable!” Of course it helps. And of course it delays the inevitable. Until we have a realistic way of getting from the current point A to the end game Point G by folding space-time or somesuch we have to make some incremental steps. Better to have a plan that might actually work than one that is built on “hope”. Hope is not a strategy.

I don’t think the clients in that last video would enjoy negotiating with Harlan…

How many times have you been on one side or the other of these conversations…

I went to Startup Riot in Atlanta this week and one of the more interesting startups was a company called ShoutNow — a rapid voice messaging company. The idea is that you record a short message using your own phone, then ShoutNow broadcasts that message simultaneously to a list of numbes you enter into their website.

The uses they suggest are more personal — coach notifying the youth soccer team that practice is canceled, pastor notifying the congregation in emergencies, etc. But a really good use of this technology for entrepreneurs is creating a voice reminder for registered attendees for your event.

You can’t be too proactive in making sure people remember to attend an event for which they’ve registered, and most people won’t mind a short voice message if it’s something they really don’t want to miss. Email is good, but it’s not reliable for time-sensitive events.

You could also use this as a follow-up reminder after the event to encourage people to get in touch if they have questions. You don’t want to bug people, but I can see a number of ways this could be used effectively to reach people who can’t reliably be reached online.

Thanks to Jim McGee for the link.

Their are three kinds of research you should do right now if you aim to discover the best way for you to be the red leaf.

1) Study your competition – likely this will verify that everyone is saying the same thing and the opportunity exists for you to say something different.
2) Study difference makers in other industries – what do small business brands that you may already admire do that you don’t? Hire a coach who works with a different industry.
3) Talk to your customers – ask you ideal customers what you do that they value. Chances are it’s not what you think and greater chances are it’s what you need to tap as your essential difference.

Let me see if I can say this in dramatic enough fashion – you absolutely must tap or create a valuable point of differentiation and then build your marketing strategy around communicating that difference or your business will struggle to rise above the competitive noise.

What Jantsch is describing is referred to by internet marketers as your Unique Selling Proposition — or USP — and it’s the key to developing your business.

Too many entrepreneurs never take the time to carefully, conscientiously, consider just what it is that their customers value in their product or service. They are too busy thinking about the cool technical features they offer, or the variety of services they provide. But these are features, not benefits. And it the benefit, as seen through the eyes of your customer, that is your USP.

Well-known direct sales copy writer John Carlton has a simple starter formula for developing your USP:

We help [this group of people]… do [this benefit(s)]… [better].

For positioning John suggests that “better” be related to the competition or common wisdom about your topic. John calls this “getting inside your customer’s head” and emphasizes that it’s not about you at all. In fact, that’s the hardest thing for most entrepreneurs to do, get outside their own head and into the head of a customer. There are many ways to do this, ranging from face-to-face conversations to web-based surveys. But the important thing is to do it.

Your USP is the key to standing out from the crowd. It may change over time, as you learn more about your customers or as your competitive environment changes. But you must always have a USP in mind if your goal is to differentiate yourself and sell on value rather than price.