Carrying on the food analogy from the previous post we can see that what an information junkie needs is a diet. The sheer volume of information we are consuming is doing nothing for us, we are effectively paralyzed by the weight of it. Success will never be ours if we don’t start now to control the information overload and make it work for us instead of against us.

There are numerous diets that we can try to lose our physical weight, Atkins, Weight Watchers, South Beach etc. and we usually try a couple before we find one that suits us. It will be the same with an information diet; we have to find the best method that works for us. Your diet will look different to mine, but all that matters is that you see results.

An Information Junkie’s Diet

Reduce calories

• Choose the blogs whose advice you most often follow and where you can add value by commenting;
• Really read the posts and squeeze everything out of them you possibly can;

Exercise

• Write a post daily, not necessarily to publish, but to build up your writing muscles;
• Choose an information product you have and study it until you know it backwards;
• Keep an ideas file and write down your thoughts daily;

Relaxation

• Set a specific amount of time for interacting with others via social media;
• Read one other blog that makes you feel good;

Feeling panicked at the thought of cutting down on the number of blogs? Yes, me too! ‘But I’ll miss out on so much; if I’m not commenting on my [number] blogs people will forget me, no one will visit my blog, I need to Twitter regularly…’

The Myth of Popularity

Erica Douglass of erica.biz said in a comment recently,

‘I have 18,000 followers on Twitter, and when I Tweet something (which also automatically goes to FB), I only get between 75-250 clicks to it. Google, on the other hand, sends me over 10,000 visitors a month even if I go away to a remote world with no Internet access for weeks at a time…as long as this site stays up.’

I have thought this true for a while, but I don’t have figures to back it up, whereas Erica does. Read her post How To Increase Your Website’s Traffic for more detail, because she explains it so well.

The most important ingredients to draw people to your blog, and ultimately become subscribers and buyers of your services or products, are:

• High quality content that answers a problem or need that they have;
• Post titles that work well as search terms, yes good old SEO, Search Engine Optimization;
• Writing with a tone of authority on the subject, yet also bringing a personal element into your posts so that people can connect with you.

Current marketing advice has us believing that connections are made mostly via Twitter or commenting on other blogs, which is why we find ourselves ‘doing the rounds’ of popular blogs because if we don’t we’ll fail.

Is that really true?

No, of course it isn’t. I’m not failing just because I’m not commenting and Twittering; I’m failing because I’m not working at what matters most, writing quality content with good titles and keywords that people are using to search for what they want.

An Hour In The Life of an Information Junkie

If there was only one hour available to work on the blog where would the time be best spent? Here is one possibility:

• 20 minutes – study of an information product (blue);
• 30 minutes – writing posts, drafting posts, practicing the techniques from the product studied above and sketching out ideas (red);
• 10 minutes – read my 3 favourite blogs and comment, do a little tweeting (green).

Spending one hour each day for a week will provide us with at least 7 posts ready to publish, a file full of ideas of what to do next and leave our presence at a few blogs, especially if we alternate them.

Now, usually I have more than an hour available each day, but I’ve totally picked the wrong time for my experiment because over the next two weeks I am redesigning a website for a friend! I originally wrote a diet allowing for three hours of work each day on my own site, but looking at it I’m already filled with dread. And that feeling tells me I’m going to fail at this before I’ve even started.

I’m going to start with the diet of one hour, outlined above, for the next two weeks, whilst I do my website design work as well. I have to say that when (not if you notice) I have managed an hour a day for one week I will have done more work than during the last month, even though I’ve been ‘working’ at my sites for around six hours a day.

I know I am wasting time, but seeing it written down here brings it home. I’ve barely managed a post a week on my two sites, and yet with just one hour a day I could have at least four published, and others in the pipeline!

InfoJunkiesAnon Discussion

What do you think to my plan? Are you interested to see what results I get? How do you manage your own information diet, if you have one? And if you don’t have a diet, do you think you need one?