I use both of those sites, but these days I use Twitter even more. In fact, I even use a special application on Facebook that lets me send my Twitter updates to Facebook so that they appear as status updates (Figure 2.3).
Figure 2.3Twitter helps me to build my personal brand and talk directly to my community, but look at what else I’ve crammed into my Twitter page: sponsored tweets, announcements, personal updates, links to blog posts, URLs, and plugs for my products.
For a publisher, Twitter can be like lifting the curtain and taking your readers backstage. While a blog post is carefully crafted and researched, a Twitter update can be spur of the moment. It can be something as important as an announcement of a new product release or as simple as a description of what you’re having for lunch. Each of those posts helps bring you a little closer to your audience.
Because your followers on Twitter can also write to you directly and publicly—and receive a reply—that relationship becomes personal. I don’t think there’s a more powerful community-building tool than Twitter—and its benefits don’t stop there.
You can also use one of Twitter’s widgets to post on your blog tweets that you’ve written, tweets that have been written about you, and even tweets that have been written about your topic. That’s valuable and dynamic free content. You can set up your RSS feed so that it feeds into Twitter, letting people on the site know automatically when you’ve posted new content. And you can include affiliate links and ads that let you earn money directly from tweeting.
It’s a hugely valuable tool that can act as a strong glue holding your community together.
Once you’ve built that community, you should find that you’ve given your site the kind of foundation that will keep it secure in the long term.
The Seven Keys to Success
In this chapter, I’ve tried to demonstrate two of the most important conditions of online success. In fact, they’re the two most important conditions of success at whatever you do:
1. Do what you do best.
2. Do what you love.
When you’re doing both of those things, I think it takes a special effort not to succeed. The pleasure and satisfaction that comes from doing what you enjoy will keep you going even when the success you really want still seems far away.
When you’re working in a field about which you know more than most, you’ll have the assets that deliver the returns.
That’s all very simple, and it makes choosing a topic for an online business—and then a more valuable subtopic—a very easy decision. It also makes building a community around your site very smooth. You’re going to be interacting with people just like you, people with the same interests, concerns, and goals. That’s like working every day with the sort of people you’d choose as friends. How many workplaces does that describe?
Those two principles are the foundation of success, but there’s a little more to it than that. As I built up my business from a single site with computer game reviews into a multi-million-dollar company, and after speaking with dozens of other successful Internet entrepreneurs, I’ve come to recognize seven keys to success. They develop from the same starting point. You still have to focus on what makes you unique and what makes you happy, but once you’ve done that, you then have to do the following.
1. YOU HAVE TO DREAM
All the entrepreneurs I’ve met had a dream. Actually, they had lots of dreams. In some of those dreams, they were lying on the beach in Cancun with the surf lapping gently against their toes and threatening to wash away their piña colada.
But that’s not the dream that moved them to set up their own business. A dream of material wealth, comfort, or a certain lifestyle is fine. It might be something to aim for in the distance. But it’s a destination. It’s not the engine that keeps you driving forward.
That’s the dream of doing what you’re passionate about.
Even lying on the beach can get old. It might take a little while, but you will eventually start to think of another trip to the sea the same way you think now about going back to the office after a weekend off. It’s why retirees with condos in Miami still keep a hand in their old business and sometimes do a little freelance consulting on the side. If you enjoy your work, why stop?
That’s the dream. If you were living that dream, each morning you’d leap out of bed ready to seize the day. Most people, of course, don’t leap out of bed each morning. Most people aren’t doing what they were born to do. If you’re not following your passion—if you’re not building your dream—then sadly, you are one of those people, at least for now.
Identifying your dream and following it aren’t always easy, but it really shouldn’t be that difficult. Most people have more than one dream and more than one passion. After I had turned my love of computer games into a successful web site, I turned my attention to something else that gave me pleasure, and still does... shopping!
Yes, I admit it. I don’t just get a thrill from hearing a KaChing telling me I have money coming in. I also get a thrill from hearing the KaChing that tells me I’m spending money—especially when I’m buying something on sale. So after creating WorldVillage.com, I launched DealofDay.com, a site that helps people find bargains. The site gets over 25,000 visits a day and continues to grow.
Since then things have gotten better and better, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I believe that when you’re doing what you were born to do, the
