Here’s Why Chasing Every Strategy Advice Can Hurt Your Business
I was listening to this podcast from Simple Pin with Kate Ahl. In this episode, Gwen of Meraki Lane was a guest, and something she said stood out to me.
Before I go into what she said, let me set the stage for you.
Gwen is a blogger and a Pinterest expert. She owns Meraki Lane, a woman-centric blog about beauty, health, and parenting; a lifestyle blog for women.
She mentioned that 75% of her traffic comes from Pinterest, and she has been doing Pinterest for so long, as far back as when you had to get an invitation to use the platform.
Kate, the host, asked Gwen a question — something about how she coped with the evolution of Pinterest over the years.
Gwen said she tried a lot of what her peers were doing, but these tactics did not make any significant improvement to her Pinterest strategy. It was not just for her or her business.
It didn’t just work
She shared a story about a special mastermind she was part of in 2016, of about 10 other very successful women who were dominating it in their respective niches.
They had monthly calls and were all in a Facebook group where they shared information about things they did for their businesses.
Some of these women were very successful at email marketing, others were doing affiliate marketing, and some crushing it in other things.
Gwen wasn’t doing any of this other stuff, only Pinterest marketing.
So, when they had all these discussions, all these other women told her she should do all these things, too, because THEY excelled at it.
She got enticed and shifted focus to putting up blog posts and doing Pinterest, doing what all these other women were doing.
Of course, her traffic and business plummeted, and it took six months for her to get back to where she was initially.
She soon realized she didn’t have to use every new marketing strategy she stumbled on.
The idea here is to focus on the end-user and how to best serve them.
Focus on what works
Gwen acknowledges that not trying out other things for her blog might cause missed opportunities.
She learned a huge lesson after the mastermind made her put her head down and focus on what came easily.
As a creator, there is always something to try. A new platform, a new tool, a new email marketing service, a new strategy, a new framework.
And I have made the mistake of allowing myself to get distracted, saying to myself, “this might be the one.”
But it is never it, just another item on my to-do list that will slow everything down.
These days, I am sticking to what is working. Which are:
Focusing on two platforms: Medium and Substack (with X on the side for rants.)
Strategy: to share as much as possible from my perspective as a content creator. I’ll not tell you what to do. Instead, I’ll share stuff from my own POV — what I am doing and the results.
That is why I love what Christina Piccoli is doing. I’ll share my observations about her strategy in another essay.
If you want to see the behind-the-scenes of a writer on his way to make $10000 writing on the internet, subscribe here.
If you want weekly content creator helpful information subscribe here.
