Jon Acuff's Blog

(Today we’ve got a guest post from Matt Chambers, the director of SafeWorld! You can follow him on Twitter @chambers_matt, or read his blog http://ethoshift.com.)

conTENT not CONtent by Matt Chambers

I have a confession to make.

I’m a…contentaholic.

Never heard of it? That’s because it’s probably not officially a “real thing.” (Not yet anyways)

But I promise I have it. It’s self-inflicted, easily enabled, and I’ve been struggling with it for years.

Basically, it’s a mental filter that stops enjoying moments of reality for what they are and processes them according to what kind of tweet I could create as a result, or how amazing it would look on Instagram.

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In 2008, I became the first person in history to go to a counselor to talk about Google Analytics.

Technically, there wasn’t a trophy or anything, but I’m pretty sure I hold that title.

Blog traffic became a drug for me and I hit the refresh button on Google Analytics like a junky.

I don’t hate Google Analytics. I think it’s a great tool.

It’s an amazing way for you to measure blog traffic.

But it’s a horrible way for you to measure self-esteem.

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I have a hard time paying attention at church.

Why?

Because for more than four years, I’ve written a blog about church.

In order to keep up with the self-imposed content demands of my blog, I had to become a content machine. I had to train myself to see church and worship and Sunday not for what they are, but for what they could be.

I had to develop “blog goggles.”

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How do you write a blog that is unique to you? How do you design a product that is unique to your company? How do you create anything that is unique to who you are and what you do?

Here in a 90 second video I explain the thumb test, something I learned working in advertising. (What I don’t explain is how to not have the opening frame look incredibly goofy. Look at my crazy half smile. Ridiculous.) Big shout out to Patrick Tohill for putting together the video!

Question:
If you put your thumb over your last blog post, book idea or project, would it pass the thumb test?

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite writers. He’s written a ridiculous amount of brilliant books and in this short video explains the shape of stories. If you’ve got 5 minutes today, watch this. Whether you ever want to write or not, this is a perfect example of how to communicate an idea. (Heads up, there’s one profanity.)

Last week, we had an influential musician over to our house for dinner. We’d never met before, but had bumped into each other on Twitter a few times and have a lot of mutual friends.

After he went home and my wife and I were getting ready to go to bed, I wrote a tweet that said, “Great day with @__________, an artist who inspires me to be a better me.”

Then I asked myself a three letter word that has the power to radically improve every blog and tweet you ever write:

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Last Christmas, I saw blogger Tony Morgan do something on his blog that was brilliant. I swore in that moment that I would copy it next year and do the same exact thing.

Which brings us to today.

Last year, Tony hit pause on his blog for the last ten days of December. Instead of creating new content, he reposted the top ten most popular posts from the year.

Why am I doing that and why should you too? I can think of 5 great reasons:

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I don’t like asking a waiter for a recommendation at a restaurant.

The reason is that waiters are often motivated to get rid of certain dishes. At the start of a shift, a restaurant manager will say, “We’ve got a ton of flounder that we need to move tonight. Push the pepper encrusted flounder dish.”

Then you sit down to eat and ask the waiter, “What’s your favorite thing here?” And he responds, “I love the pepper encrusted flounder.”

That’s not to say every waiter does that. A lot of honest ones are out there. But how do you find them? How do you sort through the ones who aren’t going to shoot you straight? How do you weed through the ones who have ulterior motives? Easy.

You ask them a simple question:

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I think blogging is hard.

I’ve been doing it almost every day for the last four years and this is the conclusion I have come to.

It’s hard to build an audience, hard to create fresh content day after day, hard to know when it’s time to change things up and hard to know when you’ve strayed a long way from the goals that originally got you into blogging.

When I bump into those challenges, there’s someone I consistently turn to for help – Bryan Allain.

We’ve been friends for about three years now and he has generously helped me with any and every blog question I threw at him. Finally, after years of doing that for a lot of people, he wrote a book for bloggers.

It’s called “31 Days to Finding Your Blogging Mojo.”

I just bought a copy for myself. It’s only $4.99 and whether you’re a seasoned blogging pro or just starting to dip your toe in the water, this is an awesome book.

If you’re ready to overcome the blog challenges that wreck so many people before they really even get started on the fun experience a blog can really be, pick up a copy of this book.

A friend asked me that question the other day, and I thought it might be good to answer it via video because it’s one that comes up a lot. Check out the clip, and let me know in the comments if you think authors need blogs .