Ian M Rountree

Freelance Copywriting and Digital Marketing

Why Genesis Framework Rocks

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I’ve used the Genesis Framework from StudioPress as the basis for my blog for a couple of months now, and am about to finish the fourth site I’ve developed on it. I need to say this: The framework rocks. Everything from the format, to the support from StudioPress, to helpful tools people have published have helped me cut down my modification and theme building time significantly.

Genesis is slick. Genesis is smooth. And, above all, it doesn’t always look the same – even when you’re using the same elements for design.

Here are the sites I’ve now got going, built on either Genesis itself, or one of its child themes.

The Dowager Shadow - Built on Genesis Framework
The Dowager Shadow
Ian M Rountree - Built on Genesis Framework
Ian M Rountree
Hard Refresh Blog - Built on Genesis Framework
Hard Refresh
Jazmine Rhomyk Gallery - Built on Genesis Framework
Jazmine Rhomyk

Yes. I like blue. Don’t judge me.

Why did I switch from Standard Theme to Genesis Framework?

  • SEO options – unless you’re using plugins, it’s the bee’s knees. Seriously – beyond just being able to designate title and meta descriptions, Genesis allows for built in redirects, which is great for link blogs.
  • Ease of design – Spending a lot of time building sites isn’t my goal – I want to get decent looking sites up quickly, so I can start filling them in with content.
  • Ease of modification – The above being said, I want to be able to iterate my work quickly. If there’s a feature I want to add, or a design change I want to make, I want to be able to make it on the fly. Genesis allows for that.
  • Updates and notifications – Really. What other theme tells you, on its own, when it’s ready to get upgraded?
  • The Showcase – totally for bragging rights. There are a lot of awesome examples in the SutioPress showcase of well-built Genesis framework powered websites. Two – and soon, I hope, three – of mine are there.

Genesis Framework can help wordpress become a proper CMS very swiftly.

Many of StudioPress’ turn-key themes make developing non-standard blogs a breeze. One of the troubles most people see with using WordPress in general is that so many WP-based websites look… Well, like WordPress websites. Getting away from the usual columned layout, and adding some flair is one of the many places where Genesis is a viking.

Check Genesis Framework out – it’s well worth it if you spend a lot of time working with wordpress.

4 Signs You’re Strip Mining Your Niche

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Vulture Mine | Flickr
Sometimes, the best way to get at a resource is by digging a pit and pulling it out.

People have been doing this for some time – but is it appropriate for bloggers to be approaching their niches the way some mining companies approach environmental conservation; with scorn, disregard for wasted effort, and their eye on nothing but fast profitability?

Like open pit miners, some content producers go right for the veins of gold in their niche by going broad and shallow with their content. By not only writing for your very specified subject matter, but addressing subjects in a strategic manner, you’re going to get more out of the wells you dig in your niche.

Here are some signs you might be missing the opportunity for sustainable work:

1. Removing overburden

When you’re starting niche work, one of the really tempting strategies is to write all the obvious blog entries first – 10 Ways to Get Better Sales, or How to Own A Hacksaw are great titles – but when you spend your first month in a blog with nothing but these super obvious subjects, one of two things happens; either you gain no ground because you’re showing no depth, or you lose enthusiasm because the learning curve goes from bunny hill to K2 after you’ve exhausted the easy topics.

2. Chopping off the mountaintops (overt criticism)

There’s always kerfuffle about negative action – but relentlessly hamstringing the competition isn’t just a bad idea online, it can be downright fatal to your career as a blogger. Because nothing ever really goes away (see also; Eternal Cache mediatrope), even if your opinions about something change, your Voice of Record never will. Endlessly pursuing conflict for whatever reasons you name is counter-productive.

3. Failing to survey properly

If you don’t do the research, no one can blame you for getting it wrong, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. Missing vital details, neglecting to give proper credit, or opining without disclaiming an article as opinion, can be damaging to your long term opportunities as an authority on the web. And that’s just with individual articles.

If you dive into a niche that’s dried up, or being effectively addressed by a range of other knowledge workers who both got there before you and know more than you do, you’re only going to be able to get a certain amount of return on your work.

4. Paying no heed to the tailings

Run-off from a blog may be harder to quantify than from a mine, but the fact remains that unaddressable byproducts exist. Unanswered comments, unthanked retweets, ghost town Facebook pages – all of these are the tailings of a sloppy blogging operation. Missing the opportunity to clean up after yourself, by responding to comments, and thanking those who share (when you find them), is a great way to waste future advocacy.

There are better ways to produce serialized content along a constrained topic set.

Because, let’s face it, that’s the technical definition of Blogging, isn’t it? We’re not just weblogging any more, we’re not journaling – certainly not if the idea of a niche has entered the discussion. Creating serialized content in a shallow manner will net swift results if done well – but it won’t last forever.

Image by Kevin Dooley.

Links That Think – Falling With Grace

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I’ve been doing a lot more reading than writing lately.

Given that I follow about 200 RSS feeds in my Google Reader, a convergence of ideas usually takes some strain – however, this evening I found a sequence of posts that was particularly elegant.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to project planning, preparation, and the effects of preparation lately. As I’m revving my motor back up after vacation, I’m finding a lot of other people are being intentional about getting back into the swing of things as well.

First, Uncle Seth talks about how to fail – something we can all get better at. When I was learning Judo in my early teens, I found it fascinating that almost the entire White Belt is about falling correctly when you’re thrown. What can we learn about failing correctly, so that we land and spring back up when we’re thrown?

Then, Stan the Man at Pushing Social gave us some hints on how to fall into the “Burnout Sucker Punch” with grace – which is a great head-first guide to finding ways out of that pit of writing anhedonia.

Stan’s article reminded me of something James at Men with Pens wrote some time ago about avoiding writer’s fatigue – which still holds true. Setting yourself up early – like, before you even begin a project – is a good way to avoid, or at least delay, fatigue.

Preparation often equates with infrastructure – Amber Naslund dropped a post today about how, while infrastructure isn’t always sexy, it’s so necessary for whole preparedness. In particular, the preparedness she’s speaking of relates to moving on from social media being flash-in-the-pan to full integration. You can’t integrate without infrastructure.

And speaking of integration – Simon Salt at The Inc Slingers wrote a particularly puissant post about the integrity of your personal brand – and, in essence, how shutting down (prolonging your state of prone repose) after a fall can be helpful. Simon was speaking not just of falling down, but intentionally stepping away for down time – which is also key.

What are you learning lately about falling down and getting back up?

5 Questions You Need to Answer to Prove You’re Not an Imposter

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Imposter - Minimoog - FlickrThe social media world is filled with imposters.

I don’t mean body snatchers or Capgras-style imposters – I mean real honest to goodness imposter syndrome candidates. People who call themselves successful, or have been called successful, but cannot line their accolades up with real business effectiveness or predetermined results. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs, consultants, and other knowledge workers who profess and opine and editorialize while lacking hard and fast numbers to back up their success.

I’m not even talking about ROI – not directly. While ROI is necessary to businesses, it’s hard for individuals not intentionally engaging in business to process, especially as a retroactive ideal.

Without predetermined, idealized scenarios for success, we’re all subject to cognitive bias in our work.

We all know people who are visibly stuck believing their failings matter less than they actually might – and if we’re honest with ourselves, we can all recognize that the potential for that behaviour in ourselves. We’re wired to act as though everything we do is successful, because working under the opposite believe is soul-crushingly banal.
We all want to be successful – and yes, it’s possible to consider some ventures successful at far lower levels of performance than others. Not everyone needs 10,000 visitors to their blog per day. Some get by with 10,000 visitors per year and don’t complain. However, don’t call the latter success if you’re shooting for the former – that way lies madness.

To avoid being an imposter, you need to set goals.

If you’re in the middle of a venture – such as building a website or planning a blog – consider whether or not you can give business-grade answers to the following questions:

  1. How would you (personally) make money from your work?
  2. At what level, either of revenue or other static metric, do you call your individual tasks successful?
  3. At what level, either of revenue or other static metric, do you call your individual tasks failures?
  4. What price would you put on what you’re building if someone asked to buy it?
  5. What would need to happen in order to make you stop doing the work you’re doing now?

All of these questions seem simple, on their faces.

And all of them are intensely complicated if you’re looking at them from the middle of a project, rather than the planning phase. If you’re in the middle of a venture and can’t answer any of these questions firmly, I’d suggest taking a long hard look at what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and decide whether what you’re doing is a commerce-grade venture or not. Not everything is, and not everything has to be.

There are a lot of ways to use online platforms to directly generate revenue.

Thankfully, there are a lot of tried and true methods for creating clear business success with online content creation – many of which rely almost entirely on the backing of the sexy metrics like pageviews, subscriber numbers, and publishing consistency and practices. This is where life gets a bit easier, because all you have to do is decide on a model to follow, and begin changing your course toward behaviors which support those models. Monetizing a blog, while not easy, is relatively straightforward.

A person could, for example;

All of these are great business goals, and all of them can become long-term strategies for success. However, since some businesses rely on blogs for revenue generation not directly related to the blog itself, other varieties of success directly related to revenue could be;

  • Maintaining a blog for the sake of customer service and question-and-answer rather than a static FAQ,
  • Creating a blog as an SEO play to drive more traffic to your business website,
  • Using a blog as a referral tool, to direct more of that traffic to a company newsletter or into a sales funnel
  • Parlaying the success and social proof from the blog into a book deal for its author,
  • Parlaying the success of the blog into a speaking career

… Or any of the other plethora of strategies out there people have used to directly or indirectly create firm, financial benefit for themselves or their business from the creation of online content.

So how do you know if the work you’re doing is generating real success, or satisfying your want for the illusion of success?

It’s easy to believe that publishing your blog on a schedule, answering each comment as it comes in, or growing your Twitter following and subscriber count is success. After all, putting the numbers for any of these activities on a graph and seeing them moving the right way is satisfying. In the end, however, these are signs of action, not signs of success – the same way achieving the speed limit on a freeway isn’t the same as reaching the destination you’re aimed at.

What do you think?

Image by Oliver Chesler.