Core Habits for Internet Marketers - Reading
When I started to blog and market online, one of the initial impressions I remember having was, “There sure is a lot of reading involved with business on the internet!”
It’s true. When you’re trying to overcome the learning curve that goes along with starting an internet based project like blogging, you will face a pretty heavy load of reading if you hope to get up to speed quickly. Some of the things you’ll want to be reading are other blogs and websites, tutorials, ebooks, and you’ll probably be reading more and more emails from people that you network with as you start or maintain your venture. That’s why I chose reading as the first core habit of successful internet marketers.
Let’s take a closer look at your reading so you can understand it and start to develop this primary habit.
Blogs and Websites
No matter how advanced your skills are, you’re going to have to maintain a certain level of knowledge about what’s going on in your industry. This means keeping up with anything your partners and competitors are writing about. In order to create a habit for doing this, I suggest subscribing to the RSS feeds for those websites, so that you can spend a few minutes every day keeping tabs on the people you know online. If you’re unfamiliar with RSS, you can learn more by reading my articles, “What the heck is RSS?” or, “Managing your RSS feeds“.
Ebooks
Ebooks are a popular way for people who work on the internet to read. Ebooks can be stored on your hard drive, or on a CD or iPod for easy transport between computers. There are hundreds of ebooks floating around on the internet… some of them may cost you your email address, and there are others that you could purchase if you were inclined to do so.
Recently, I published “14 Essential Ebooks for Bloggers and Marketers“. All 14 are available for free, and I think that they’re a good start to the library for any serious marketer. Stop by and download a couple to see what you think.
Books
Hardback and paperback business books are also a good reading choice for marketers. A classic textbook for marketers is Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson. One book that I’m enjoying right now myself is called The Magic of Thinking Big by David J Schwartz… not quite a marketing book, but it’s certainly a way to feed the reading habit. Stay tuned for more on books. I’m planning to publish a fantastic list of business books as a resource in the not too distant future.
Develop the habit of reading
In order to develop your core reading habit, I suggest spending between 15 minutes and half an hour a day doing nothing but reading. It may not feel completely natural at first if you aren’t used to dedicating time to it each day, but that’s the thing with habits… it gets easier and easier the more you do it. Try to find that half an hour before you go to sleep, or maybe during your lunch break at work. If you’re able to read at the same time every day, it makes it much easier and more natural to create the habit.
Stay tuned for the next article in my Core Habits series… Listening.
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Chris Bloczynski dot Com is a blog about entrepreneurship and internet marketing. It's targeted towards ebusiness owners and bloggers, with an emphasis on principles such as attitude, mentorship, tools to streamline your business, and tactics for marketing and growth.
Nice, Chris. It’s really a good read, and definitely, reading is the only key to get updated with what’s going on around.
You bet it is!
Reading is the best friend of writing and writing relates to blogging. If you don’t read or you are basically reading the same thing everyday, you will find yourself writing boring articles.
Reading materials, inside and outside the niche, can make some great reads and often, my blog post ideas come from my reading.
Great point, Wayne! I find the same thing to be true for myself… the more input I have from my various sources of reading, the more ideas I encounter that make good topics for writing or discussion.
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That’s right! It’s the only way to keep up and be abreast, besides it’s even easier now because it’s just a click of a button to be up to date.
It’s also very much applicable to reading blogs that you visit and I might be off topic here, but this is exactly the reason why I dropped Entrecard on my site because most people there are CLICKERS and DROPPERS not readers. They might have visited my site, but they probably did not even read the headline.
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Chris,
I cannot agree more with this core habit. Reading is definitely important for internet marketers. I recently started utilizing my google reader account and have subscribed to many feeds related to the industry.
On a sidenote, I’m also reading “The Magic of Thinking Big”. Although it doesn’t relate to online marketing, all of the principles outlined will definitely assist growing one’s business.
Thanks for your comment, Royal. I’ve read “Magic of Thinking Big”… it’s an incredible book! I probably subscribe to way too many feeds in my Google reader, too, so I know what you mean. Thanks for stopping by, my friend!