Mediocre

Riff On The Age Of Independent PR Blogging

Garth Beyer

I just caught Arik’s article on PR daily suggesting the age of independent PR blogging is over.

He suggested there’s too much noise.

I agree, there is, but the most wonderful attribute of the Internet is those who are the loudest do not rank the highest. It is those who provide the most valuable work who rank the highest. There’s a filtration system for independent PR bloggers. Especially PR bloggers.

If you think you’re part of the noise, you’re not creating enough value, you’re not connecting with humans, you’re not standing out. Like I wrote yesterday, it’s not the person who can juggle more balls or yell louder than the rest who gets the attention, it’s those who get in front, those who make themselves vulnerable and those who create the greatest value who get the attention.

It’s easy to say there is too much noise. It’s a whole lot harder to admit you’re part of it. Noise is what groups of mediocre people make. Noise is cared about only by those who are making it.

He suggested early bloggers have moved on.

They have, but we need to clarify, not just the why, but also the where. They haven’t moved on because independent PR blogging doesn’t pay off, they have moved on because it has. They aren’t off somewhere else trying to get the same results they hoped for from blogging, they’re out there reaping what they sowed in their blogs.

He suggested you beware the content machines

Independent travel bloggers, say, Mike Walsh with flight4sight aren’t afraid of sites like Pursuitist. Consumer centric growth blogger Steven P. Dennis isn’t afraid of content machines. Bernadette Jiwa isn’t afraid of sites like Copyblogger.

Just because there are wandering generalities, content machines, if you will, it does not mean you can’t become a meaningful specific. (HT Ziglar)

Courage is the key ingredient

Writing as an independent PR blogger, I’ve shared all the same concerns as Arik. I’ve feared I wouldn’t make it through the noise, I’ve questioned whether it would be worth it or not, I’ve worried what the point would be of investing so much time in a blog if I knew I would eventually leave it behind (I won’t), and I’ve felt beaten by the content machines out there.

Recall the filtration system I mentioned, all the filters are right there. I understand the fear, the apprehension and the concern. It takes a lot of courage to blog about technology when TechCrunch is out there. But it’s that specific courage that makes you and your blog valuable.

If you’re going to plant any seeds, be sure to see their growth all the way through.

Trends don’t end

Lastly, a note about trends in general. A trend isn’t over if people leave. A trend is only over if people leave for something else, something better. Arik notes Danny is leaving the trend of independent PR blogging for his family. It would be different if Danny was leaving the blogosphere to start a new PR trend.

Spending time with family doesn’t produce the same benefits as an independent PR blog. Trends end when people find an action they can take that has the same benefits as what they were doing PLUS some. Better stated, trends don’t end, they change.

 

Stay Positive & It’s The Independent PR Bloggers Who Change Them, The Content Machines Simply Follow Suit

I was privileged to exchange a couple of emails with Arik since posting this. It needs a returning note. There are dozens of benefits to establishing a group blog model, benefits an independent blog model doesn’t have. However, it works the other way around too. My final note is a reminder that you can have the best of both worlds. In the early ages of PR blogging, guest blogging gathered attention for multiple bloggers at once. Think of group blogs as guest blogging on steroids. Bloggers never stopped writing for themselves even though they wrote guest blog posts, why should you if you’re also part of a group blog model?

Thanks, Arik.

What’s Your Speed

Garth Beyer

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Are you a sprinter? A pacer? A walker?

Imagine that you work at a bookstore and someone asks you to help them find a book. You know exactly where it is. How fast do you walk to it?

Walk slow and they perceive you as not caring about what you’re doing. Go too fast and they perceive that they are a nuisance to you. Walk at their pace and they won’t perceive you at all.

The big go getters in life, the real big ones, they don’t make it. I’ve tried each of the paces. I’ve gone too fast and crashed. I’ve gone to slow and disappointed people, including myself. I’ve done things at a mediocre rate and went unnoticed.

I’m writing to tell you that the right pace is different for you than it is me because we’re likely trying to please a different group of people. However, we all have our competition. The right pace can be simplified to slightly faster than your competition, than those trying to please the same group of people as you. We all have our audiences and average pace for pleasing that audience.

The best become so by being slightly better.

Selling, consulting, making people happy. It’s not a race. The quickest don’t win. Those who push themselves just past the average are the ones who win.

And in the world we’re in, winning is everything.

 

Stay Positive & Get Out There, Be Better Than The Rest

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The Not-So-Simple Simple Process Of Becoming An Expert

Garth Beyer

Step 0: Choose what you want to become an expert in.

Step 1: Learn about it to the point you don’t make mistakes.*
Step 2. Do things adequately.
STUCK
Step 3. Follow your intuition.

After step two is complete – you’re mediocre and work has become more a routine than anything – is when almost everyone gets stuck. They get comfortable with meeting standards and not pushing any buttons for improvement. But there is no art in doing something right. The art is in doing something better than it was done before. Art follows passion and passion follows intuition which hopefully you follow. That is how you become an expert.

* No. I hope it’s obvious that I don’t actually mean that you don’t make any mistakes at all. However, there is a point in every position of your career path where you make little to no mistakes. This point arrives when you learn nearly all you can.

 

Stay Positive & If You Stop Being Surprised At Work, You’re Stuck

Garth E. Beyer

Questioning Error Correction

Garth Beyer

What if we corrected all the errors in the world? Would we be perfect?

If you answered yes, do you really believe it?

Does correcting errors bring out potential? Or merely suppress it and endorse mediocre?

If we got every student to get an A in each subject, would we have a world of inspired geniuses or a world of people who are just good enough in every area?

Getting a juggler to never make an error kind of defeats the purpose of a juggler doesn’t it?

If error correction is your goal, are you saying that being at a specific prescribed weight is worth giving up the slightly off track, but happy, minor error eating habits you have?

Do you think it’s fair to train one person to correctly do 10 tasks or 10 people to not only correct one task each, but to bring their creativity to that one task as well?

Only focusing on error correction kind of destroys any potential, any chance of growth of creativity and of art doesn’t it?

 

Stay Positive & Why Correct The Bad When You Can Amplify The Good?

Garth E. Beyer

 

“The World Still Moves On”

Garth Beyer

It’s a common saying, a statement that gets the average worker to not bring home frustrations and sobs from mistakes that took place during the day. It’s a motivator to those who think that since the world still moves on, that they better move on too. (You caught the post earlier about what happens when you stand still.) But what you may not know, is that the saying is used by the dispensable cog, the mediocre, the “average” Joe, the common worker.

See, a Linchpin, someone who brings the best to their work, brings passion, motivation, self-determination and so much more; when they stop working, when they take a break or leave for the day, the world doesn’t move on. Linchpins make the world stop when they stop being creative. The world can’t function without them doing what they do best.

Sure, the mediocre can move on, but the Linchpin moves up.

 

Stay Positive & Keep The World Turning

Garth E. Beyer

1,000 Destinations

Garth Beyer

Everything is about the journey you take: how you did it, how it felt, what you learned, who you helped. It goes on. No, really, it goes on. The journey is a life long journey, it’s never ending – unless you count death as the end. Regardless, there has been a new conflict of interest in society, more specifically in the most recent (and upcoming) generations.

For simplicities sake, I will refer to the group of people as                                           Generation Destination

Generation-D loves a journey. They love the process, the failures, the mistake, the lessons, the connections, the ups, the downs, the progress, and all the unrelated interesting things they learn during the journey. In fact, they love a journey so much that one, just isn’t enough. Gen D produces more creativity than any other generation. Their instinct and ability to adapt is so inhuman that they deserve to have more than one journey. In fact, they are so far out of the status quo that instead of having 1 journey, they have 1,000 Destinations.

Generation-D is so talented –not born with, but created talent– that they have the power to manipulate the time a journey takes. Actually, it is not so much manipulation as it is the fact that the more creative, the more passion and the more busy (productive) a person is, the more time they have. In Gen D’s case, they use the extra time they have to make more journeys. Because they follow their heart, invest in their art and connect with everyone by offering a gift to all who they meet, they reach the end of a successful journey the quickest, resulting in a smile and a start of their next journey.

What Generation D is not

If Gen D could spit (some of which can and do), they would spit on two things. First they would spit on anything that is not art and anything that impersonates art. They don’t follow the status quo, they don’t do as their told and they don’t like mediocrity. They spit on anything that is unoriginal, factory made and has a set of instructions on how to make.

The second target, which you can bet they would really build up for, is anything average. Unlike, the people who live one journey (the average) instead of a thousand destinations, Gen D does not work, work some more, and keep working only to attain minimal amounts of progress. They don’t stand in the assembly line, they don’t walk down a hill, they run up it. They don’t create anything that if someone breaks, they wouldn’t be fined or go to jail for. That is how remarkable of content, creation and value they enforce and produce.

Generation D Statement

To create 1000 times the value in a 1000 different ways. (It’s not just a statement, it’s personal, it’s a pledge, it’s a declaration)

They aim to make 1000 destinations because they not only do what they love, but they do it efficiently, quickly and precisely. They can reach a 1000 destinations because they create art that has and adds value wherever it goes. The saying that you can be successful when you want it as bad as you need air to breathe doesn’t have a say here because the air Gen D breathes is success; it is art, it is passion, it is value, it is originality, it is everything we need.

Quick question, who do you think is going to gain the most interest in society?

The generations of mediocre, average, incomplete, held back, ill rewarded, humdrum, and unexceptional

or Generation D?

 

Stay Positive and End The Conflict Of Interest, Be Indispensable

Garth E. Beyer