In a game of chess, the best players plan 3 steps ahead. I am going to explain how we can apply that to business. We all make goals and set deadlines but do we make each step help the next step?
Let’s take blogging for an example. A blogger make 1 post daily, comment on other blogs, and does promotion for the blog. All of this takes up time. Let me show you how. Writing the blog post’s, cuts into the time to do promotion for that post, which cuts into the time to comment on other blogs. Commenting on other blogs need the most time and takes up the most time.
How can we blog this like chess?
Write all 7 posts for the week on Sunday. Publish one on Sunday and schedule the rest. This allows you to have the necessary time to promote each article. The rest of your time can go towards blog commenting and testing out other marketing ideas.
In the bloggers case, each step helps each other by not cutting into each others time frame. Also the blogger can now write some articles when breaking news comes out. His or Her blog will be one of the first to have the news. The blogger won’t be busy with writing their daily post or promoting because all of it is done for that done.
Let’s do another example. Marketer builds a site and does the promotion for it and make’s sales. The marketer keeps making money as long as he or she keeps traffic flowing. Great business but that’s not planning ahead.
How can we market this like chess?
Write down everything you do with your site. Write down where you bought domain, hosting, and designer. Write down all the ways you did promotion and be very detailed about it. Writing all of this down, you just wrote an ebook without even thinking about it. You making money from your site and now you have an ebook you can giveaway or sale to teach others how to make money the way you made money. If you going to sell it, you have proof the method works because you did it.
In the marketers case, writing down everything he or she did to make money from the site, gave the marketer a new product. Not only does the marketer have a new product to sell but proof that the method works which will lead to sales of the ebook.
You see, each of these short term struggles for long term gain. The blogger struggles to write 7 articles in one day, but gain time to promote and/or let their readers know of some breaking news in he or she niche. The marketer struggle to learn how to make money from the site but gets finally gets it right and gains a new product to sale in the process.
Each step helps the next, are your steps helping each other?
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Creative idea about blogging is like chess. It seems that you have to decide which step is safe. In blogging, you actually can play safe =)
I am glad you like it. I wouldn’t say safe. I do take risks from time to time. If I had to sum up this article in one word, I would have to say “Leverage”
Never thought blogging was like chess until you posted about it. You are 100% right and I’m even smiling about it now.
You always have to think a few steps ahead and be on gaurd for anything that might happen.
Yeah, you are right we must always be on guard of changes in our niche.
That’s thinking ahead 3 steps. Writing is easy but promotion is difficult. Posting a post and then promoting at the same time takes a lot of time. Planning the promotion and a post is a way of letting the two things work separately.
Very creative piece of writing and to spin the business into the chess is some nice work.
Another good post on how a blogger can manage their time. Like I said in another post, many bloggers do not have the time to make a post a day. Writing a weeks content in a day (pick a day that you are not busy obviously) is a great way to make sure your on track. Good post!
Promotion is not difficult if you know what you doing and have the time to do so. Writing the week posts on Sunday gives you all the time you need to do the promotion. Both posts and promotion work together. One can’t work without the other. You can write all you want but without promotion nothing will see it. You can do all the promotion you want but with the content there’s nothing to promote. You can my point?
Yeah, it was a combo of me being bored, talking with my girlfriend about business, and trying to explain something to her and chess was the example. Crazy how I come up with posts. lol
Yeah, whatever it takes to save time and grow the blog at the same time is perfect.