Tom Brings the Pain.

I began writing the post that follows in response to another post entitled, How to become a better writer. I've decided that some of what I talk about below may help the wider community, and since you may not have found the other post, I've decided to plop it here where you have more chance of finding (knock on wood) the value. This isn't the usual thread I would decide to create. It lacks jokes about drunk monkeys. It lacks the type of subject-matter that will boost the ole view count. And, in some places, it suffers from being a little disjointed. It was, as I say, originally written in reply to another thread. At times, then, if you haven't read the other post, what follows may feel somewhat disjointed. I urge you, though, to plough through. Well . . . no. This is a post about communication and about connection and how writing, sometimes, not always, plays a part in those two things. If, then, you struggle with those things, then - go ahead and plough through. It'll be worth your time.

Time to bring the pain.

If you struggle to connect with your audience, you will struggle to earn money as an internet marketer.

You can quote me on that.

Before I even had my first girlfriend, I was writing short stories, novellas, novels, and both short and feature-length screenplays. Those things? I had more interest in things that go bump in the night (and often in the day) than I did taking Jasmin or Rebecca to the movies. I willingly gave up weekends to hammer out a screenplay. I polished shorts on the way to classes. If an English teacher set a one page (A4) writing assignment, I was known to hand in a 40,000 word novella. I did not read books. Nor did I watch movies. If movies and books had been able to open a mouth and scream, they would have done just that at the sight of Tom. I ate them. I devoured them. It was not enough to appreciate a good story; I had to absorb the mechanics that made it a good story. There was a terrible fear of not absorbing those mechanics, you see: what if you miss something, Tom, something vital, a vital literary trick, even just the one, and what if you end up wandering blindly through the literary wilderness, never able to stumble upon the land of Published, the land of Produced? A terrible fear. Far worse than never getting to kiss a girl. Infinitely worse (if you can believe this) than missing an episode of Fresh Prince. Those early days, then, were defined by one overriding occupation: writing, and I'll be 42 this month, and nothing has changed.

If you want some cold, hard, uncompromising advice, then hear me out and take what follows to heart.

The successful internet marketer is able to communicate well with his or her audience. The most successful will have the strongest communication skills. If you fail as an internet marketer, your failure will, nine times out of ten, come from weak communication.

If anyone tells you different? Never listen to another word they say.

Or write.

But communication is not just about slinging words around. Nor must the words, that you do sling, seem to have come from Ernest Hemingway. Communication, for a marketer, is not about winning a Pulitzer. Communication is connection. It is understanding your audience well enough to speak their language, and in doing so, to connect with that audience on an emotional level. If your audience feels nothing from your communications? You. Have. Failed. You have entered IM Land through the door marked Enter and you will shortly be leaving IM Land through another door; not an Exit door, no, but instead one that is marked Failure.

This is what you can do:

• You can listen to the marketer or the guru who promises to give you a secret Done For You system that will dollop wads of money into your bank account, without, let us not forget, the necessity of you having to do any of the hard work to earn those wads.

• You can listen to members of Warrior Forum who sell the dream of living the dream without living that dream themselves. People who, even if they did have all the answers, would almost surely not share them in public, likely not even in private, likely not even with their own mothers, let alone with you.

• You can listen to anyone, not just the two varieties mentioned, who are intent on pulling the wool over your eyes. By all means, listen. By all means, spend. Buy eBooks. Buy coaching. Buy courses. Buy services. (Especially those delightful Done For You services, those of the wad-dollopping kind.) Buy and buy and buy and, always, buy into the silliness.

Or . . .

You can learn a few things, all about connection, that will actually help you.

• You do not have to write like Hemingway. You do not, even, have to write like PeeWee Herman. You have to connect with your audience. Connect. But if your audience demands writing of the PeeWee Herman variety, then you better deliver.

• Practice, when it comes to writing, will not bring about perfection. Written perfection does not exist. But practice, even when we're talking about writing sentences that are not replete with errors, is still not the answer. Learn basic mechanics - spelling, grammar, punctuation, style - and then practice. You should get better at writing the more you write, but a turd is a turd, and no amount of polishing will turn that turd into a diamond. Written communication is important for a marketer but understand that, often, practice will only get you so far. The Huffington Post will not necessarily come a-calling.

• The best writers in the world were born that way. Hemingway did not pen Old Man and the Sea because, between drinking and hunting and brawling and fishing and drinking and chasing tail and drinking, he practiced his craft of writing. He wrote it because he was born to write it.

• You do need to worry about spelling, grammar, and punctuation. You do if . . . your audience worries about it. It goes back to connection. When Rose Anderson is kind enough to educate us about writing, she connects with me, through her adept use of writing, and I find myself digesting what she tells me. To some audiences, correct use of language, and all the fiddly mechanics, will engineer connection. I expect (and often even get) decent writing from a Huffington Post author. I want it from anyone, anyone, where a poor grasp of written communication would signal to me a poor grasp of the subject-matter. I do not want it from Pewdiepie. I sure as hell want it from someone telling me how to write.

• Writing like mad is sodding useless if, beforehand, you need to learn the basic mechanics of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style. Stephenie Meyer writes like mad, let us not forget.

If you've made it this far into my post, then it means one of four things:

1. You're looking for items that you can troll.
2. You're wondering if Tom cites you and your post.
3. You're looking for a quote so that you can agree with it and get easy signature views.
4. You have a strong interest in the topic at hand.

This last part goes out to you, then, you, the person with a strong interest in becoming a better writer.

• Work hard to improve your writing. Never stop working hard. Strong written communication is not essential, but it sure as sheet helps. It pervades so many areas of IM Land, and in many of those areas the residents truly do care about your writing.

• Understand that becoming a better writer is good, generally, but it pales next to becoming a better communicator. The two things often go hand in hand, of course, but not always. Some audiences could not care less if you screw up your grammar. Just so long as you communicate what needs to be communicated? You've connected, and it's all good.

• The strength of your writing comes second to the strength of your ability to connect with your audience. I dare say Pewdiepie will never receive a Pulitzer, but boy oh boy does he connect. So just use your head. What level or type of written communication does your audience demand? Can you deliver? Can you deliver the information in another way? If your audience demands well-written blog posts, can you deliver videos, instead?

• If your writing is weak, and if the topic at hand does not absolutely require exemplary levels of writing, then you can make the necessary audience connection by delivering information of such value that your audience will be willing to overlook some weak writing. If, for instance, you're selling a groovy t-shirt, and if Joe Surfer must, must, must have that t-shirt, you won't sour the deal with poor usage of the comma, or any other such elements.

I mentioned pain at the start.

This is the pain: your business may very well be destined for failure.

If you have a business in which you either struggle to connect with your audience, or will never be able to do so, then you need to drop that business.

Walk.

Away.

Just to be clear: this is not about poor or out-and-out weak writing. This is about connection. Connection. It could be about writing. As I have said, in some cases, strong prose is a necessity. But if your communication is weak, then your connection to your audience is weak. And if so - I say again - walk away, drop the bugger.

Question is, how can you tell? Does your audience require strong writing? What's the answer, Tom?

The answer is to use your head.

Put yourself into the shoes (or heels or slippers) of your audience. Does Joe need correct grammar? Will Joesephine give a toss if you write 2 when you should write "to," instead?

Quite often this question can be answered by looking at your competition.

The competition have conditioned your audience, you see; they have, in a sense, brain-washed your audience into expecting a certain level of writing, even a certain type of writing, heck, a certain tone.

And it is not necessarily about grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Consider the writing that is often dished out by Youtube influencers. The actual writing would often get them a D in any English class, but the very same writing still represents strong audience-connection.

Are you doing that? Can you do that?

If not - walk.

Now, there is nothing worse than a Warrior Forum post that leaves you high and dry, is there?

"Tom, thanks for all that, mate. It looks like I need to walk away from my business. You know, the business that took me 8 months and 16 days to build, but who's counting, right? Looks like I'm buggered. Up the creek. No sodding paddle. Adrift. Sinking. Oi! Tom! I said, I'm sink-"

Play to your strengths. If you have them, play to your strengths.

I teach students from different countries, not all of them speaking English as a first language, and the first thing I do is consider their strengths. You may blow at writing, but maybe that doesn't matter. (Remember: connection matters.) You may be confortable in front of the camera or maybe you can whip-up graphic designs or maybe you have a facility for coding or for voice-overs or maybe you can find an audience where putting a comma here or putting one over there is less important than the information (the deets) you have to share.

Find your strengths. Play to your strengths.

We have people in this industry (not the I Want to Teach You Internet Marketing industry; I mean the industry of working online to pay your bills industry) who, on their best sodding day, could only write a book like Twilight. Yes. That bad. Just to be clear? We're talking men and women who write there when they mean their, people who have about as much facility for writing as I do for sweet talking Mrs A into letting me have a second doughnut for lunch. No facility, in other words.

And yet:

And yet many of these very same people earn more money than your gurus . . .

Talk of doughnuts has made me hungry. Added to that: Mrs A is nowhere in sight. That said, then, let me round up by giving you some options, and believe it or not, you may have hundreds of options.

I like nice round numbers (just like Laurence Garfield - and if you get that reference, you can have a bite of a my upcoming doughnut), so let me give you a nice round number of options.

If, through writing, you struggle to connect with your present audience, here are 4 options to consider:

1. Youtube. Find your niche and learn how to give an untapped audience (or inefficiently tapped audience) what they want or need. Learn how to rank your videos in Youtube Search and Google search. Learn how to add the viral element to those videos. Grow your subscribers, but collect your audience on your own platforms (like a newsletter), as well. Consider affiliate marketing. Consider your own merch. Consider whacking up the views so that you can join the Youtube Partner Program and earn from AdSense. But whatever you do, figure out what your audience wants, how to connect with them, and how to deliver the goods.
2. Instagram. If a gold rush exists right now - June, 2017 - then that gold rush is happening on Instagram. (Tip: when people are not madly talking about something in the open on Warrior Forum, madly talking, then it's either because they have no interest or a lot of interest. As before, use your head. Talk of Ezine Articles is down because it no longer happens to be 2005. IG talk down? Never truly up? Well, why might that be, eh?) Images. Videos. Connections. Give people on IG what they came to experience, not what you think they came to buy, and learn how else to grow your IG.
3. Facebook. Grow yourself a page. You can do it the hard way, entirely viral marketing, or you can boost your posts. If you have the casholla - boost, boost, boost. What you need to do is whack up your Likes to around 5K. Once you hit the magic 5K mark - trade. Facebook TOS does not allow selling shoutouts (the buying of which is common, of course, but not recommended), but you can trade. Get to 5K. Trade traffic. Grow to 6K, to 7K, grow as much as you can with your low-level trades, but then upgrade those trades. Start trading with 10K pages. Then with 15K. Then - you get the picture. And speaking of pictures: regular images, captioned images, videos, gifs. Those types of media go viral on Facebook far more easily than articles.
4. Landers. A lot of the time in IM Land, all you need is a decent landing page, and you can even outsource them (in fact, if you're new, you probably should). Now just consider the simple ways to drive traffic to a lander. Can you buy traffic? PPC? PPV? Can you write and rank basic forum posts? Can you rank and send viral videos? Youtube? Daily Motion? Can you leverage offline opportunities? Can you grow socials and fling traffic from them? Or can you (in a legit way) buy exposure on socials? Hundreds of options and they all start with you having the right landing page. Ah, but what IS the right landing page? This: one that collects your audience and then connects with your audience. If you're promoting free join paid survey offers - great. But don't just whack the offer before your audience. Put it behind that squeeze page. (And put more than 1 offer!) Mary from Wallace, Idaho, may truly benefit from earning a little extra with paid surveys (and more than that if she joins all of your suggestions), but what other help can you offer? Answer: lots, most of which can be monetized.

It's time for that doughnut.

You have plenty of opportunities in this business. Find and play to your strengths. If you see someone doing well in business? If a guru wants to hand you a system? Ask yourself: does it play to my strengths? Will I be able to, among other things, connect with my audience?

If the answer is no?

Walk.

And never forget the golden rule: when you walk away, throw the man selling you the wad-dolloping system The Bird.

Throw him two.

- Tom