Have you ever noticed that when you leave a restaurant there is always a bowl of mints near the exit? From low-class diners, to high-end eateries, restaurant owners are giving away free mints. They give their patrons decent meals and send them off with a little something extra for the road.
It feels great. That just-brushed clean feeling puts a huge smile on your face as you leave the restaurant, and there my fellow friends and professionals, lies the rub.
The food may not have been amazing, but you left feeling great. You might even go back to that restaurant to try to duplicate that feeling. The restaurant owner knows this, so he will continue to give out free mints for the road.
Well, blogging and consulting is no different. Your success is directly dependent on how you make people feel.
Feeling Great
When I started blogging back in 2005, I scoured the internet for resources on how to make money online. I came across ebooks like The Rich Jerk (a complete scam), Digital Point, and Problogger. I fell in love with Problogger because every one of his articles gave me a specific action to implement on my blog. And, within six months, I was earning good money on the internet.
Now, do you want to know the morale of the story?
Here I am, nearly three years later, talking about those action items Darren gave me. I don’t remember his writing, I don’t remember his analogies, and I don’t remember his action items, but I remember he helped me succeed and it felt great.
Tip: Focus on giving your readers something they can take home with them (a mint maybe?)
Feeling Frustrated
The new growing trend in the internet marketing world is pop-up subscription boxes. Sure, they convert great, but are they really the people you want subscribing to your site?
Probably not.
The people who subscribe are probably looking for free stuff and moving on to the next website that will offer them more free stuff. This isn’t true “Permission Marketing,” a la Seth Godin. It’s tricking people who wouldn’t ordinarily subscribe into subscribing to your website.
Do you know what also happens? People like me and Leo Babauta are immediately turned off by these subscription boxes because it ruins the user-experience. It gives us an upset stomach before we eat our meal.
Tip: Make us feel great, and we’ll remember you forever. Make us feel terrible and you’ll have to work extremely hard to get us back. After all, you wouldn’t ask one of your restaurant patrons to lick a bar of soap on the way out.
The Bottom line
Your content may be mediocre, your analogies may be below par, and your sentence structure may need work, but if you give your readers or clients a mint to make them feel great, they will come back for more and consistently talk about you, your blog, and your company.
Bonus: Have you seen the main characteristic of successful bloggers? Well, it’s not happiness. It’s discontent.
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STUMBLED!
Thats a fantastic analogy and tip, the question now is, what will you leave as a mint.
heh…
Good post.
@Geoserv You don’t think I left a mint?
I probably worded that wrong, I was asking the bloggers reading the post.
The trend of popup subscriptions is a real step backward. It turns off so many valuable potentials. There are lots of folks like you who are grateful for pro bloggers who give you the real beef, helping you and therefore helping themselves. The mints are multi-colored since the blog’s content may bring related but different visitors who can pick and choose. That’s what makes the mints even tastier. I feel refreshed just looking at that bowl!
@SBA At least someone else sees eye to eye with me!
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