Guy Kawasaki is a well known personality and the co-founder of Alltop.com and a partner in Garage Technology Ventures. He is a businessman, an online personality and pretty experienced person.
I generally watch his videos to get some inspirations and understand how the Business & online world works. A few days back I was watching a video in which Guy Kawasaki explained some myths that people have about running a business. I personally think that Blogging is not less than a business, so I tried to link the myths about the business to blogging. And guess what? I was able to do that.
So, today I will be sharing with you 7 things that I learned from Guy Kawasaki, that you can implement to become successful in the online world.
1. Hire People More Capable Than Yourself
People generally hire people that are less efficient than themselves as they don’t want anyone to show them down in any field. Come on guys, no one can be master in all fields. People are experts in particular things, so if you hire anyone expert in any field. It is a win-win situation for you.
You should proudly say that ‘Yes, he/she is even better than me in Social Media Marketing’ or in any field. It ultimately makes your team superior. Work on your team, not just on yourself. It will surely help in long term.
2. Blogging Experts Are Clueless
Yes, it’s right. No one can understand your brand or your blog/website as you can do. They can just share their experiences with you but it is not necessarily that you are on the same issue, and on the same road. Problems are different and in the same way solutions are different as well.
If anyone out there calls himself a guru or expert by himself, trust me, “STAY AWAY FROM THAT PERSON”. If a person is truly an expert in the field then silence & patience would be in them automatically. You can only take advice from the experts but you can’t get answers from them. Use their advice to create your answers and things would work out.
3. Readers Can’t Tell You What They Need
Yes, it’s right. Readers can’t explain what they are exactly looking for. The reason being the upcoming content is kind of an imaginary thing, and why people would imagine for your blog. You need to figure it out on your own. There are many ways to do so, search among comments, figure out what people are looking for in the Facebook groups etc.
But on the contrary people are looking for fresh content according to their needs. So you need to spice up your content by checking out their needs as well. If you are able to do it, then your blog will get an upper side for sure.
4. Design/Appearance Counts
Design matters. Trust me or not, I have personally seen in my two years of blogging, that most of the time a book is judged by its cover. So, if you are thinking that you have implemented a normal looking theme, and people would love that just because ‘Content is King’. Then I am sorry, you are not on the right path.
Try to work on the appearance on your website, get a custom logo, with content displayed with a nice typography. And see the magic. People would love to read your content as it will be delivered in a nice plate.
5. Value is Different from Price
Value and price are often taken as one. But they are a lot different. For e.g. you spend 30$ on a plugin that helps to save your content, comments and much more that must be of a lot more value. You can’t say that I will not spend 30$ to protect my blog content.
If you still are not concerned about your blog content then, it clearly means that the blog content is not even worth 30$. And I am sure it is more valuable?
So, always think about the value and not the price. If value is more than the price, the deal is always profitable. Do it without even thinking about the second thought.
6. Real CEO’s Take Responsibility
Real CEO‘s have to take responsibility. You can’t skip from your responsibility; you have to be there in every good or bad situation. You have to believe in your team that is helping to take your blog to the next level. You have to give them the motivation they need to work day in and day out.
You can’t be the one who doubts whether the blog you are working on will be a big blog or not. Instead you should believe that yes it will be a big blog and here’s the plan for that. Real CEO’s take responsibility and lead, and the team follows. Owners can never be just like another team member they have to lead. Prepare yourself.
7. Believe In Your Brand
If you don’t believe that your blog will be a big one or top ones in the market, then I am pretty sure that no one in this world can make your blog a big one. Only you – the founder has the power of imagination to make their blog a big one. You might need a help of a lot of people to do that but without you, no one can make it.
So, do believe in the thing that you have created. Think about the reason for which you entered blogging, work on that same reason. Trust that reason and you will be there.
Do share your views about this post? We would love to hear from you via comments.
All these shared points are very important and have great worth to make our blog perfect and impressive. Kawasaki is the symbol of success in business therefore he is able for this that we should follow him to be successful in our own business.
Hi Harneet, you have shared some true insights & thoughts about blogging in this article. Specially the first point “Hire people more capable than yourself”. It’s a great lesson to learn not only for bloggers but for all kind of Entrepreneurs who dreams big in their life. Each points you have mentioned has a great impact.Thank for this inspiring article.
Kawasaki is very attractive personality, thanks for the list of things which we can learn from him
Hey Harneet,
nice post with great information. I totally enjoyed the whole post while reading it and I really like the first and last point. With hire people more capable then yourself is the best way to increase your business and also provide more helps to blog.
Hi Sudipto
Thanks for your appreciation. If you hire people more capable than yourself, then there is a chance of growing.
Keep visiting.
Wow last one about “Believing In Your Brand” is strong thing. thanks
Thanks for the appreciation. I strongly believe that in the coming years only brands will survive.
1. Hire People More Capable Than Yourself – this point actually can cover all other 6 points! 🙂
Thanks Siti for your comment. Yes, it’s all about building a better team and grow.
All seven are solid points. BTW, I like the way you transferred the idea from kawasaki to blogging. Thanks for keeping it plain and simple @ Harneet
Thanks Karthik for the appreciation. Business & professional blogging are almost the same. If you know what I mean.
its nice these tips are very helpful thanks for sharing..
Thanks Rahul for dropping the comment. Much appreciated.
Great post, I believe that hiring people capable more then ourselves is the best way to improve your business. Instead of going through difficulties running online or offline job, we should all when time comes hire a manager to do that for us.
thanks for sharing 🙂
Hi James,
Thanks for your appreciation. And hiring people is one thing that we don’t think about much but I personally believe this should be the first thing that we should do when thinking about expanding our business.
Nice points to remember for every blogger. Believing in brand and taking responsibility are my favorite points.
Hi Ranga,
Thanks for your appreciation. And Ya, making a brand is one of the key factors that determine your success. Keep visiting.
Indeed having trust in yourself is key to success in blogging in fact in every field ,if you think you can yes you can if you think you cant yes you will underestimate your abilities sometimes i think success depends upon the state of the mind ! What Say Harneet ?
Yes, Karan you are absolutely right. If you don’t believe in your work, no one in this world would believe in you. This is the first step & very essential too.
Keep visiting.
Completely agree with each and every word of the article, Harneet.
Reading your third point reminds me of famous Henr Ford’s quote-
“If I asked my customers what they want, they simply would have said a faster horse.”
I think I should also start watching TED videos regularly. 🙂
Hi Rohit,
Ya, I too remember this quote and I completely agree with this point. And about the TED Videos, I highly recommend it to each & every person out there.
Guy Kawasaki is the man I always look up to for all my online business ventures. Thanks for sharing the post Harneet.
Hi Ram,
Thanks for stopping by & leaving a comment. And ya, I also look up to this man.
Hi Harneet,
Good tips, I don’t agree with number 3 as I do think readers can tell people a lot about what they want, especially if you ask questions or they ask you questions. After a while you get a sens of their fears, challenges and needs and you can create content and or products to meet these needs and create more money.
Thanks for sharing,
Beth 🙂
Hi Beth,
Thanks for sharing your views with us. Yes, you are right at your place that we get a sense of what they need.
Keep visiting.
Wow ! it’s stunning specially the first point you mentioned Hiring more capable blogger than yourself is really a great idea and the rest info is also great and I will be thankful if you share a post on what kind of post we publish on our blog so that probability of clicking on ads become maximum, my blog have good traffic great Alexa rank (under 2K in India) but still my Revenues are like nothing, so please help me out…
Hi Krishna,
Thanks for the great words.
I personally believe you should write articles to help people genuinely and it will surely increase the traffic as well as click on the ads.