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The Transcript

How to Write (Much Better) Blog Comments

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM.

Sonia Simone: Copyblogger FM is brought to you by StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Built on the Genesis Framework, StudioPress delivers state of the art SEO tools, beautiful and fully responsive design, airtight security, instant updates, and much more. If you’re ready to take your WordPress site to the next level, see for yourself why more than 190,000 website owners trust StudioPress. Go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress. That’s RainMaker.FM/StudioPress.

Well hey there, good to see you again. Welcome back to Copyblogger FM, the content marketing podcast. Copyblogger FM is about emerging content marketing trends, interesting disasters, and enduring best practices, along with the occasional rant. My name is Sonia Simone. I’m the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital and I like to hang out with the folks who do the heavy lifting over on the Copyblogger blog. You can always find more links, extra resources at the show notes for this podcast. You can find them at Copyblogger.FM, and that’s also where you can get a complete archive for the show.

The Benefits of Leaving Comments on Blogs, Podcasts, or Other Content Venues

Today, I want to talk about a subject that might seem obvious, or it might seem simple, and every single day I am reminded that many people aren’t very good at it. That is leaving a good blog comment. You probably know if you followed us at all for any length of time, Copyblogger turned off comments for quite a while, I think it was over a year. The main reason we did was we just were not seeing super high comment quality. Now, some people were leaving wonderful comments, and then a lot of people were leaving the other kind. Spam comments are one thing and they’re taken care of tolerably well by spam filters.

That wasn’t really the problem. The kind of spam that gets caught in spam filters was not really an issue. The issue was the volume of comments that were really intended for a different purpose other than connecting with the community. Some people on the Copyblogger team hate comments, not all of those people are named Brian Clark, and some people on our team love comments, and not all of those people are me.

The Kinds of Comments We Love

Every one of us loves the real community building kind of comments. It’s always great for all of us to hear from the people who really, truly make up the audience. Folks who are working on their content, interested in content quality, trying to make something happen, and maybe they have a question, or something catches their eye. Those are just awesome and we still love those.

Now, it’s probably worth talking about why leave a comment on a blog at all, other than just you ve got nothing else to do for the next two minutes. The biggest reason is that commenting on blogs still works. When I say works, what I mean is that one of the biggest questions people have is, How to expand their audience, especially when your site is new and young? How can you expand your audience, how can you promote your content, how can you get other people to find out who you are and what you’re doing?

One of the most important ways to do that is to create some conversations and relationships with other content publishers, with other people who have YouTube content, or blog content, podcast content, what have you. The web is a social place and the whole commenting system is a way that we can foster our community, and make connections with each other, and make new connections with people we haven’t met yet. That doesn’t work when people leave comments that feel dodgy or feel spammy.

I wanted to just give some suggestions for folks out there to leave the kinds of contents that are going to open up relationships with the people that … Whose work you respect. Of course, it’s a not very thinly disguised encouragement to come on over to the Copyblogger blog, or this podcast, or both, and leave comments so I can get to know more about who you are and what interests you.

I’m going to give you five things to keep in mind when you’re leaving a comment on someone else’s content. Again, really any kind of content. This also counts on social platforms. The first one is you want to put your best foot forward. Things like, make sure you’ve spelled things properly, make sure that your remarks are reasonably grammatical. Nobody needs to be perfect and things don’t have to be … You’re not submitting a paper to your eighth grade English teacher, but fluency counts and presenting yourself well counts. In my opinion, you must have a Gravatar. You get a Gravatar by going to the Gravatar website, it’s easy to Google, I will give you a link, and just give them the email address that you use when you post comments and put a picture of yourself up there. Your Gravatar needs to be your face.

A Peek Behind the Comment Spam Curtain at Copyblogger (Warning: It s Not Pretty)

Now, once in awhile you can get away with something kind of silly like, a cartoon face. In fact, on one of the email addresses I use sometimes, if I have trouble commenting with my regular one, it has a cartoon face, and that’s sort of okay. What does not work is to have your logo, or to have something else where you’re hiding behind some kind of organizational identity. Because organizational identities cannot get into relationships, and the only reason to comment anywhere is to have good conversations and create relationships. There are now a few sites that will simply throw into the trash any comment that does not have a Gravatar or that has a Gravatar that is a logo. Similarly, we will trash any comment where you use your keywords as your name, or usually, if you use your company name as your name, we will just throw it away.

Part of putting your best foot forward and part of making a good first impression is that, let us know that you’re a person and not, literally a bot, or perhaps some very poorly paid freelancer who’s just going around the web leaving comments, because people believe it has some kind of SEO value. I have no interest in starting a conversation with, Best SEO agency Atlanta, and I’m just choosing Atlanta at random.

Now I will definitely talk to you if you work in SEO. I like a lot of people who work in SEO and any glance at my Twitter stream will show you that. What I don’t want to have a conversation with is a collection of keywords. It just makes you look like a spammy jerkface. Okay, so that’s putting your best foot forward, making a good first impression.

How to Make Sure Your Comments are Relevant

The second best practice is please know the site that you’re commenting on. Please actually take some time to familiarize yourself with what’s going on there. You want to comment on sites that you actually know something about. You want to be able to make comments that are relevant. You cannot create the relationships that we’re talking about creating with content publishers with this kind of shotgun approach. I see it all the time. It’s often outsourced, and it’s clear that somebody’s got their little spreadsheet and they’re going down to 30 or 40 blogs a day and leaving a comment. It doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work. You want to find a select group of sites that have content that you really resonate with. It really works for you, you’re really getting it, it’s meaningful to you. Then participate in an ongoing conversation there.

Because I’ll tell you a secret, the first time you comment, nobody is going to notice you, really. You’re just not going to stand out. Although, it does help to have your face in that Gravatar icon, because that starts to give the publisher something to hang onto. “Oh, that Susanna person seemed nice.” Now, when that Susanna person shows up consistently, not every day, not like being the first commenter … That it just becomes so obvious when it’s completely done as a tactic. I just see Susanna fairly regularly and I start to recognize her avatar and she’s participating in an ongoing conversation. Then I start to say, “Oh, Susanna’s cool, I like her. It makes me happy to see her on the site.” For example, and yes, this is absolutely a hint, you could participate in our content challenges at Copyblogger.

We just kicked off the January prompts last week. If you want to do that, let us know in the comments, you know, How’s it working for you? Let us know, “I tried this and then that happened,” or let us know that, “I tried the thing you recommended, but I ran into a snag,” or let us know, “I don’t know what it is about me, but I just can’t deal with the Pomodoro method, it gives me hives.” Just have a conversation that’s relevant to what we’ve been talking about.

Another nice way to do this is to ask a relevant question. Something specific like, “Should I try this technique that you’re recommending in this piece of content given the set of circumstances?” Now, you probably don’t want to have five or six pages of explanation, but enough details that we’re talking about a real world scenario, and not just the vague show.

It shows that you’re actually connected to the topic and you’re kind of working with the material and making it your own. That’s really what virtually every content creator wants to see happen. We want to see people who are taking the material and actually doing something with it. That’s a huge win for almost any content creator. We love to hear about what you’re doing.

Make Sure You Have Something to Say

That kind of leads to my number three point, which is, let’s please stop with the vague comments, the content-free comments. “This certainly seems like a high quality site, your advice with this is very good. I will try it.” That just goes right in the trash. It doesn’t say anything. It’s completely meaningless. I mean, it’s an attempt to be pleasant and I like that, rewards for being polite, but it doesn’t contribute anything to the conversation. You can’t create a relationship with a publisher and a relationship with a community, and don’t overlook that element of it, until you actually start sharing something specific about what’s going on with you.

You should realize, if you’re going to use blog comments to widen your network and get to know more people who publish content so you can just organically grow your audience, you should know that as a content publisher, the reason that I have comments on my site is I want to know more about who’s reading, and who’s listening to the podcasts, and what kind of things bug you, and what kind of things work for you, where are you coming from.

The content-free comments, those vague comments, they’re sort of vaguely pleasantly complementary without ever getting specific, they seem like they’re no big deal, they don’t seem like they’re hurting anything, but they create all of this clutter. I gotta tell you, after awhile, they get incredibly irritating. So please just don’t. If you don’t have something to actually say, think about having something to say and post comments on the sites where you actually feel moved to add something to the conversation.

How Not to Be That Guy

The fourth kind of best practice or recommendation is really, you have to realize that this is a long game. Commenting on a blog or commenting on a podcast is not going to get you a flood of traffic, it’s not going to help you make your numbers this month, it’s not going to help propel your book to Amazon number one. If you’re using it as that kind of short term tactic, it just shows, it’s so apparent, and it feels creepy. Even if you follow the rules kind of to the letter, the spirit is off and it feels off and your comment s going to get trashed.

I’ll tell you what that reminds me of. If you’ve ever been to a networking breakfast, like a live thing, and you know that there’s always those couple of people, often guys, but definitely not always guys, who relentlessly hit everybody up with their thing. It’s usually a multi level marketing thing and everybody in the room groans when that guy walks in, because he never asks a question, he never has any curiosity about what anybody else is doing. He’s for sure not there to buy, he’s only there to sell his crummy thing that you could get anywhere.

Nobody likes that guy, do not be that guy. Don’t comment on blogs where you think somehow you’re going to sell something, whatever that means to you. Comment on sites where you’d just really like to make a connection and you’d like to get to know people better, and possibly do some work together at some point down the line. It just needs to really be about making a connection first.

Now, major bonus points if you’re in a situation where you can swing it. If you know the site, or you know that writer from some kind of a connection face to face, so at a conference, a live event of some kind, definitely do say hi. It is so nice to see somebody in the comments, or on Twitter, or a lot of places, if I’ve had a nice conversation with them at a live event somewhere. This applies just as much to conversations on social media, as it does to content comments. It’s really delightful when you can make that connection, it just makes such a difference when I have a real person to connect the Gravatar and the name to. If that’s something that you can do, it really, really is a wonderful way to make a lot better relationships, and make good connections. And then you can maintain those connections with things like comments.

What No One (Except Me) Will Tell You About Playing the Devil s Advocate

The last piece of advice, a lot of people will not tell you this, but I am going to tell you this, because a lot of people are not telling you the truth. Everybody actually hates the devil’s advocate. There’s always that one person who thinks it’s a good way to get attention to be super contrary and constantly say, “You guys are wrong, this is dumb, lol,” usually lol goes in there somewhere.

If you want to be contrarian about somebody’s ideas, whether that person has a big site, small site, I don’t care, do it on your platform. Your platform is a great place to say, “I know everybody thinks those Copyblogger people are smart, but I think they’re totally wrong about this and here’s why.” Then present a cogent, intelligent argument. Smart, well thought out disagreement will do a lot of good on your site. When you come take it to the comments on my site, it’s just kind of annoying.

Now, that in no way means that you’re not allowed to disagree, because that’s just silly and I’m not saying that at all. But, you need to think about how reactive, in fact, how inflamed the social web is, especially right now. If you make a habit of bringing attention to yourself by being contrarian, a) I think it’s a little bit lazy. I’d rather see you actually come up with some ideas. I’d like to see you come up with some recommendations, some … “I think everybody ought to do this, I think this is the way to go and here’s why and here’s my evidence.” A little bit of, Being a contrarian makes a good seasoning, but again, do it on your site. It’s just going to get you a lot more benefit and everybody hates that guy.

No one will tell you that, because we all want to think, “Oh, I’m all for constructive criticism,” and everybody’s for constructive criticism in theory. Nobody really likes it. So, if what you’re doing is commenting to create relationships, a real small amount of that goes a long way. Occasional disagreement is fine. Keep it respectful.

The Art of Constructive Disagreement

My dad, who is the world’s biggest crank, really just on the planet, will go on a major tear and then he catches his breath and says, “Well, that’s how I see it. You might see it differently.” I think this is such a good … That’s such a good way to look at things. Yes, it’s okay to disagree, you don’t have to agree with everything we say on Copyblogger, but if you make a point of showing up and telling us how wrong we are, you’re just being irritating. In most subjects there are multiple good approaches, and so a good content publisher is going to kind of choose one path, and they’re going to publish content about the path that they can speak to intelligently and authoritatively.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t any other paths, or no other paths exist, or every other path should die in a fire. But, if you have a real different way to do things, be respectful, learn what you can, engage in the conversation, make friends, and then present your way that you think is the right way on your site and pull your own tribe together. There’s no reason we have to fight, or squabble, or any of this silly nonsense. We can all hang out, and be cool, and each have our own point of view about things.

That’s it, five ideas for leaving better comments on blogs, on video, on podcasts, on any piece of content. They also work when you’re leaving a note or a comment on somebody’s social media platform. This is, as you can tell, a hardly disguised at all little bit of motivation. We love to see your comments on Copyblogger. I particularly love to see your comments on Copyblogger.

If you’re going to be joining us for any one of the content challenges, or all of the content challenges, or if you just see something that you find useful, or you’re not sure about, maybe something feels a little bit unclear, I love it when you leave us a comment. Let us know what’s working. Do let us know if something’s not clear or it’s confusing to you and you need something spelled out a little more, because that really helps us create content that works for you, and that’s what we want to do.

Thank you so much. I sincerely hope to see you in the comments. This is Sonia Simone with Copyblogger FM, take care.

The Transcript

The 2017 Content Excellence Challenge: Your January Assignments

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM.

Sonia Simone: Copyblogger FM is brought to you by StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Built on the Genesis Framework, StudioPress delivers state-of-the-art SEO tools, beautiful and fully responsive design, airtight security, instant updates, and much more.

If you’re ready to take your WordPress site to the next level, see for yourself why more than 190,000 website owners trust StudioPress. Go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress.

Well, hey there. It is excellent to see you again. Welcome back to Copyblogger FM, the content marketing podcast. Copyblogger FM is about emerging content marketing trends, interesting disasters, and enduring best practices, along with the occasional rant.

My name is Sonia Simone. I am the chief content officer for Rainmaker Digital, and I like to hang out with the folks who do the heavy lifting over on the Copyblogger blog. You can always pick up extra links, resources, and show notes by going to Copyblogger.FM in your browser. That will also get you to the complete archive for the show.

Welcome back after the Christmas break. It is excellent to see you again. I missed you madly. I hope you had a great little break during the time away.

Why Sonia s Not a Fan of New Year, New You Messages

Today, of course, it’s a New Year episode. So we’re going to talk about new year, new you resolutions, all that stuff. This is the time of year when we all decide collectively that we’re going to be entirely different people.

We are no longer going to eat any sugar, and we are no longer going to dribble our lives away, getting into fights with racist people’s uncles on Facebook. We’re going to floss every day, we’re going to exercise, and we’re going to think charitable thoughts. And we’re going to be completely different, more shiny and virtuous human beings.

Except as you know and I know: Yeah, no, we won’t. I’m not saying that we never get to recreate ourselves or that we never do create a new you; we never recreate ourselves, reimagine ourselves. It does happen.

It happens gradually. It happens cell by cell. It happens over time. Sudden change is typically associated with trauma, and your brain normally, actually correctly, is terrified of it.

Real change, lasting change, true deep change very rarely comes from these New Year style resolutions, these all-or-nothing promises we make to ourselves. And we’re breaking them sometime around January 3rd, January 4th. It certainly has been known to happen that we make big changes all at once, but it’s rare and often it’s not by choice. And that’s really not what we’re about.

The other thing I happen to dislike about this whole new year, new you kind of message is that it rests on an assumption that the old you just ain’t cutting it. And in 2017, I really think that for most of us, it’s exactly the wrong approach.

So do be useful, do be interesting, and do respect your fellow human beings. Get the bases covered, and then from there, let go of all this nonsense about trying to be some kind of plastic, perfect human being. Because not only are you not going to get there, but nobody actually wants it anyway.

I hereby give you permission to quit trying to fix everything that’s wrong with you. If you’re not useful, interesting, or you don’t respect your fellow humans, fix one of those three. Other than that, let’s work with what you’ve got and try and make it better.

Introducing the Content Excellence Prompts

You might remember, middle last month I kicked off something on the Copyblogger blog that I grandiosely called the 2017 Content Excellence Challenge. This is a combination of writing prompts and then habit prompts.

The design here is to get all of us with a better skill set for 2017 and a better set of habits or practices, so that we can produce more work, get more done, and just be happier with how things are going.

This week we’re going to start our first official prompts. In December, we had some to play with, noodle around with. Because it was December, and December is nuts for most of us.

This week we’re going to start our first official prompts for January. Our writing prompts for this month are going to be around headlines.

Now you probably already know this, even if you’re never seen any official stats, but most content on the web, on social media, etc., is shared without being read.

On one hand, this is horrible. But on the other hand, it’s not as horrible as you think it is. What happens when content gets shared without being read is somebody looks at it, they make a snap judgment: This looks useful. It looks like it will probably be kind of interesting. And they share it.

They might share it with a friend. They might email it to a friend, or more typically they share it on social media. They might even read a sentence or two, but a lot of times that’s all they do.

What that allows is it allows your content to surf along from slightly interested person to slightly interested person until it finds your perfect person. It’s only depressing if you’re counting on every single person that shares it, having read it thoughtfully and carefully and perhaps made a few notes. We know that’s not really happening.

But it does find the perfect person for that piece of content. It is actually a pretty good way to locate that person who is really resonating with what you have to say. Really resonating with the kind of problem that you solve.

It seems depressing at first, but it’s actually a cool way the content pinballs around the web until it finds the person that it’s meant for. But that will not happen if you suck at headlines.

Good headlines are essential to allowing this to happen, to allowing that content to surf along until it finds the exact perfect person. It also does cool things, like it makes it more likely that somebody will click on your article if they’re doing a Google search. And you end up on the page, but maybe not at the top of the page.

It makes it easier if you wanted to run some advertising to your content. People are more likely to click on it. In 2017, we need decent headlines on our content.

The Importance of Avoiding Cheap, Weak Headlines

I’ve got a couple of don’ts before we get to the dos. The first don’t is don’t create misleading headlines. Don’t create clickbait, fake news baloney. Do not write headlines that are not supported by the actual content. Because it’s lame, it’s cheap, and it’s weak.

Also related to this, don’t actually write fake news. Don’t write lies. Don’t say things that are false. We are in enough trouble as it is. So, please everybody, let’s respect reality.

But when you are writing something that’s worth reading or creating a podcast that’s worth listening to, I want you to put a really solid, interesting, compelling headline on it. Because good work should get a wider audience. It deserves it.

Fact-based work should drive action. It should be what people share, and it should be what people read. Being incompetent at marketing doesn’t make you virtuous, it just makes you ineffective. And we need good people to be effective.

By the way, lest you think that I am letting one side of the other off the hook here, both sides of the political spectrum in the United States — and also in the UK and also in Europe, and also everywhere else on the planet — share stupid baloney. This is not something one set of people does and the other set of people are way too smart.

Why Smart, Ethical Content Creators Need to Get Very Good at Marketing

Everybody shares nonsense. We need to knock it off. Which means that good stuff and people like you who are creating real content that’s ethical and tells the truth need to step up our marketing game. We need to put our big-person underpants on, and we need to learn how to compete in the marketplace of attention.

It’s actually really important. It’s important to us individually, and it’s important to your audience.

Copyblogger is known for headlines. We have a lot of materials to help you out with headlines. We have a very cool ebook. It is free. You just go sign up for it, and you get immediate access to it in our content marketing library.

We also have lots of articles, so I will share all kinds of links with you. All you have to do is put Copyblogger.FM in your browser, and you’ll be zoomed automatically by virtue of the Internet to the right page to get all those links. You can also just go over to Copyblogger.com, look at the blog, and find my blog post there, and I’ll put the links for you there also.

5 Rules of Thumb to Keep in Mind When You re Crafting Your Headlines

I’ll give you a couple of rules of thumb, just to get your engines going. The first thing, the first technique if you will, that you want to do with headlines is you just want to learn. You want to get ideas for good headline structures by looking at what’s working already.

It’s really useful if when you look at a headline that does get good traction, try and figure out why it’s working. Is it really making a big promise to the reader? Is it commanding attention with maybe an unusual word choice? Try and figure out why it might be working.

If you have a decent idea, a lot of times you can just take that headline and swap in your own information. In fact, there’s a technique that copywriters use. Brian Clark wrote about it ages ago.

Sometimes called the Cosmo technique, where you just pick up a popular magazine that’s good at headlines. Find one that jumps out at you. And then you put your topic and your information into that headline structure, and then write a piece around it.

This is also incidentally a great way to come up with a post idea, if you’re just really dying for one this week and you haven’t come up with anything good.

Back in the day, when I was publishing my personal blog, Remarkable Communication, I wrote a post called 50 Things Your Customers Wish You Knew. It was just ripped off right from a Cosmo headline. It was like 50 Things Guys Wish You Knew. It was a tremendous post. Actually, it was great fun to write, to come up with all these things. It was a real exercise in creativity. It also just went crazy, that post did so well.

That’s something you can do. You can take a strong headline that’s working, that you find interesting, and then you can shape a good piece of content to fit the headline. There’s nothing wrong with that. Writing the headline first — time-honored copywriting technique and works really well.

The second principle of good headlines is you always have to be able to back it up. You don’t want to run thin, weak content under a powerful headline, because all that does is get the word out really quickly about how crummy your content is. Make sure that your headline is not writing a check that your content can’t cash.

Third good headline principle is to experiment with how strongly you word it. Sometimes, with some audiences and some markets, it’s useful to actually step back the hype one or two clicks. You also want to be careful about the new clichés, like You won’t believe what happened next. It worked really well for three weeks, and then it became a self-mocking statement.

A Sure Way to Get Your Headlines to Bomb, and Where to Use Those Skills Instead

Related to that: Fourth headline principle is to avoid doing things just because they’re clever, because they’re an in-joke, or because you’re being ironic. Like running headlines saying You won’t believe what happened next.

All of these things — cleverness, in-jokes, and irony — can work really well in content. They can work beautifully in content. But they usually bomb in headlines, unless you know your audience very well.

Typically headlines want to be clear, and you want to promise something that actually matters to the person reading the article or listening to the podcast.

Then the fifth principle of good headlines is you watch what works for your situation. Not in my situation, or BuzzFeed or ProBlog, or anything else, but what’s working well for you.

Take a look at your email platform — which messages are getting opened, which blog posts are getting more traction, more traffic, more comments, more shares — and do more of what works. Do less of what doesn’t work for you.

We can give you all kinds of starting points, and we can give you all kinds of general ideas of best practices. But everybody has to establish our own best practices for our own specific set of circumstances.

It does definitely happen that what works well for you might not work well for me, and vice versa. That’s the background on headlines.

In January’s writing prompt, first thing that I would love for you to do is to come up with 20 headlines for the next thing you want to write. Could be the thing you’re writing right now, could be the next piece. Maybe more than 20 headlines.

Feel free to use that Cosmo technique to come up with some ideas. You can actually just go to a site like Magazines.com and just look at issues of popular magazines for interesting headline structures. And then think of what really good pieces of content could you create that would fulfill the promise of those headlines.

Do go ahead and pick up our headline ebook, because that will also give you some good structures, some good principles you can use. And just brainstorm 20, 30 headlines. Then every day this month, every day in January, I would really recommend just brainstorm a couple more — two, three, four a day. Just keep a big long list of headline ideas.

Some of them can be silly or crazy. Actually, sometimes the crazy ones end up working really well. Try and incorporate all the headline techniques you learn from the Copyblogger posts, from the headline ebook. Try and incorporate those techniques. I will get you those links again at Copyblogger.FM, or you can pick them up at the Copyblogger blog.

That is our writing prompt. It might not seem creative, but it absolutely is creative. Working on headlines is an interesting blend of art and craft. More to the point, if you are wonderful at headlines, your content is going to do better.

Copyblogger is really marked by how many gifted, talented content creators listen to the podcast and read the blog. I want you guys to get more eyes and ears on your content, because it’s worth the attention. I want you to get amazingly great headlines so that your content can get more of the attention that it deserves.

Every month, in addition to a writing prompt, we’re going to do monthly habit prompts. These are tweaks and little changes that you can make with the intention of creating more, producing more, and again just being happier with how your professional life is going.

This month s habit prompt: Today, after you finished listening to this podcast, so that might be in five or six minutes. I want you to find whatever you use for your calendar to plan out your day, and I want you to mark your highest-priority, first-thing task for tomorrow.

I also want you to set some kind of a timer, probably on your phone or your laptop or whatever, to do that every day this month. Try and get it done by lunchtime every day.

You might have an 8 a.m. meeting tomorrow, or a 7 a.m. meeting or a 6 a.m. meeting. You might be doing the school run, or you might have the dog to walk. I’m not necessarily saying that you need to do this as soon as your eyes open in the morning.

You might need to define first thing. It’s possible that that will have different shapes depending on what day it is. Like when you have your Monday morning 8 a.m. meeting, then first thing is first thing after the meeting. But the rest of the week, you can go ahead and do your first-thing task as the first part of your work day.

Frankly, you know yourself better than I do. If your best first-thing moment is first thing after I put my kids to bed, I am not going to judge you. You know what works for you.

Most of us actually do well to attack one important weighty project first thing in our professional day. You can make a commitment to do this five times a week, or you might prefer to do it six times a week or seven times a week. If you can, try and make that decision today, which way you want to approach it.

Sonia s First Official Rule of the Challenge (and No, It s Definitely Not Don t Talk about Content Challenge )

I’m going to introduce a challenge rule. And this rule will obtain for the entire 2017 Content Excellence Challenge, and it applies to both your writing prompt and your habit prompts.

The rule is no beating yourself up, because it really doesn’t help. If you mess up a day, if you decide Yes, I’m going to do this, then you do it three times, and then you forget the rest of the week and you don’t remember again until the middle of next week, just get your first-thing task identified as soon as you remember.

And then jump on it tomorrow and define what is your first-thing time. What’s the time frame you’re going to do it in? In other words, first thing after what? First thing after my first coffee? First thing after what? Then make sure you’ve got all the stuff you need.

Do you need certain reference materials? Do you need to run a session that shuts down Facebook so you can’t sneak onto Facebook. Get yourself ready for it. But get yourself ready for it the day before.

What to Do If You Forget to Work on Your Prompts for a Few Days (or More)

That’s the habit for this month, is identifying the task the day before. It would be wonderful if you do the task. That’s really good, do your best. But the habit is to prep the task the day before. If you mess up a couple of days in a row, you just get right back on it and do it again.

Sometimes you might need to reframe it. You might say, This doesn’t seem to be working, so I’m going to have to reframe it, I’m going to have to rethink it, or I’m going to have to restructure it.

Your habit prompt for this month is that every day, you’re going to decide what is your first-thing task for the following day. And you’re going to try hard to do that by lunch time and set up any reminders or timers that you need to do, so that you remember to do that.

Your writing prompt is to sit down, write out 20 or 30 draft headlines. Some of them will be great. Some of them will be dopey. Use all of the materials that we have to help you come up with ideas, and then every day brainstorm a couple. Brainstorm two or three, four, or five, if you’re feeling super ambitious.

If you’re into it, either right here at Copyblogger.FM or over at Copyblogger.com on the blog, you can let us know what kind of amazing headline ideas you come up with. We’d be happy to see them and hear from them.

We would also love to hear how is that going for you, identifying your first-thing task for tomorrow. By the way, when I say task, I think sometimes we get too big with it and we think, Well, my first thing tomorrow is going to be spend four hours cleaning the garage or something crazy like that.

Try and make it something that can be contained within one, let’s say, 20-minute session. A Pomodoro Technique session.

I’m going to give you guys a link to a nice article I found taking exactly that approach. And he calls it frog legs in a tomato reduction, and you’ll see why when you read the article. Very nicely done. Just a good little frame, if you need a frame or you need a little bit of productivity motivation to get you rolling.

So that’s it for your January prompts. Please do drop by. Let us know how they’re going. Let us know on the blog or the podcast how it’s working for you, and I’ll catch you next week. Take care.