Photo by muha...

The well-worn phrase “Do what you love and the money will follow” leaves a lot to be desired. Even if you could get paid to watch episodes of LOST (you can’t), you’d probably yearn for more rewarding work.

There is a marked difference between things you love that could make money and things you love that won’t. As a general rule, if it helps you enter a ‘Flow state’, it’s a winner. If it doesn’t, it won’t make for gratifying or lucrative work.

‘Flow’ (see Wikipedia page), a psychological phenomenon, is how you feel when performing a task that absorbs 100% of your focus. Time seems to run faster while in a flow state - hours can pass without notice because you are too focused to care about the passing of time. If you stop and think about it, I’m sure you can think of one activity that makes you feel this way, whether it’s writing a blog post, web design, exercising or developing new business ideas.

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Photo by A Chilling Soul.

Seriously. For 7 days, don’t do any link-building or guest-posting. Don’t leave comments on other blogs. Don’t tweet your stuff. Don’t do SEO. Don’t do a single action intended to bring a new reader to your blog.

You can keep posting as usual, but that should be the extent of your marketing.

Do I want to show you that writing good content is all you need to grow your blog’s readership? Nope, that’s not it. It’s also not true.

So what am I getting at?

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Photo by Tony Frissell, 1947.

When I’m in a healthy blogging mindset, I write long posts every few days. I’ve tried short and newsy in the past, but have realized I’m no Seth Godin. If I’m going to say something important and useful, I need plenty of words to do so. That’s the style that works for me, but it won’t work for everyone.

By studying some of the bloggers I admire I’ve realized that there are five dominant content ’strategies’ they use, and that each one is very different from the others. This is good news, because it means that there is (mostly) no right or wrong way to do content. I’ll talk more about that ‘mostly’ caveat later.

Despite the many differences, the similarities are more telling. I think I’ve been able to work-out some factors that are must-haves for your content. Without them, you simply can’t grow your blog into a niche leader.

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Photo by notsogoodphotography.

For a number of years bands have been using the web to create ’street-teams’ - exclusive groups that turn fans into promoters. In exchange for spreading the word about the band, fans in ’street-teams’ would get early notice about ticket sales, discounts on merchandise and other bonuses.

This might seem irrelevant to the usual scope of this blog, but I think the ’street-team’ concept can be powerfully adapted to building your own audience in areas far outside the music industry. By giving your biggest fans the tools to spread the word about you and rewarding them for doing so, you can create a powerful grassroots promotional machine for your work.

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Photo by Gaetan Lee.

If you have an online audience of any size you are often going to be asked for help and advice. You might be at the point where you can assist everyone who asks, but if your audience keeps growing this state will eventually pass you by.

Or, you might already be finding it difficult to help everyone and regularly forced to say the dreaded ‘No’ word. You worry: are you losing a potential customer or client in the process? More importantly, are you making someone feel crappy?

There is a way to turn the experience into a positive for both people. Next time you have to say ‘No’, recommend someone else to help.

Make this someone you know online (or offline) or someone you would like to get to know. Not only are you giving the person a helpful recommendation, you’re potentially sending a new client (or reader, or viewer) someone’s way. Do this enough and they will want to start repaying the favor.

Just remember: ask for a “tell him/her I sent you.”

It’s a neat form of networking and a good thing to do.

Photo by mikebaird.

The term ’social media expert’ has been the subject of a lot of talk and a lot of controversial articles lately. People have written about the different types of social media expert, whether it’s OK to call yourself a social media expert and outlined who they believe are (and are not) experts in social media.

The term has never been more commonly used. This is probably because an entire industry has bubbled up around people creating businesses and services springing from their claimed expertise in social media. There are a lot of good people in this industry and there is a lot of good work being done.

What I’d like to do in this post, though, is get people thinking about whether it is actually possible to be a ’social media expert’. As the title of this post suggest, I believe it isn’t. Here’s why.

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