Your ability and willingness to take consistent and persistent action will determine the future of your online ventures – whether you agree or not. In fact, the results will be visible in various facets of your internet business – whether you blog, write for Amazon Kindle, create your own products, or run a membership site.
Here are 5 key areas that will be affected by your consistency and persistence:
1. Your social media presence.
If you look at how quickly things move on social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, it becomes obvious that you have to “be around” on a regular basis in order to be seen. In fact, there are just so many posts on the average user’s timeline that they can quickly forget about you if you don’t keep reminding them about your presence.
Remember the old saying: “Out of sight, out of heart.” It has never been more true than in this day and age.
While it is true that you can get away – to some extent – with scheduled posts, you will still have to put in the time and effort to schedule those posts (consistently).
As far as persistence goes, remember that social media is over-crowded and over-exposed. As such, connecting with other like-minded people starts off slowly, and gradually picks up speed as you go along. Too many marketers fail to accept that it will take time, and give up when it doesn’t happen soon enough.
Note: Pinterest also rewards consistent participation by showing your pins to other people more often.
2. Your blog (or membership site, or Kindle) content:
Human beings are creatures of habit. Our very lives are ruled by rhythm – the days, the hours, the regular reminders of hunger, and for most people, their working hours. It appears that we find some reassurance in the rhythmical occurrences.
As such, your audience will be much more likely to respond to consistent content creation – regardless of the frequency. Whether you put out one blog post per week, or add one new item to your membership site per month, it will always go down better if you do it when they expect you to. So if you want to add just one blog post per week, do it on the same day of the week every time. The same goes for email marketing.
As far as persistence goes – every piece of content you put out is a potential visitor magnet. Those visitors can come via Google, social media, visitors sharing it with others, etc.
As someone once said: “If it isn’t on the shelf, you can’t sell it.” Meaning that, you cannot attract visitors with the content you don’t have. Most of the top blogs have a substantial amount of content – go figure.
3. SEO – search engine optimization.
It’s no secret – Google gives preference to fresh content. After all, they have to give any new piece of content the opportunity to prove that it provides a good user experience. As such, Google reward consistency.
As for persistence – getting decent amounts of traffic from Google depends not only on your SEO, but also on how many pages you have indexed. Every additional page is one more way to be found in the search results. On top of that, with so many sites popping up like mushrooms and then being abandoned, Google prefers to wait a while before it starts sending you any decent amount of traffic.
Depending on your niche, the quality of your content, and the number of pages on your site, it can take anything up to a year before it really picks up speed. If you persist, you will benefit from free traffic for your site after that. If you don’t – do the math.
4. Your branding and credibility.
Branding and credibility goes hand in hand – and both are built upon trust. Trust comes from having the perception of the other party being dependable. Part of that comes from “always being there.”
As far as persistence goes, establishing your credibility as a person and/or brand takes time. No persistence, no credibility (unless you have a professional accreditation – which most internet marketers don’t. It’s as simple as that.
5. Your skill set.
We live in the age of information. We have too much of it. Not that we don’t want or need it, but it’s just too much to process. However, in that mass of information there are a multitude of tips, ideas, suggestions and useful bits of information that can benefit your internet business.
By being consistent in expanding your skill set, you will be able to keep up with new developments in your niche (and the blogging/website world), without missing out on some tool or information that could have made you more money, or saved you time.
Being persistent in expanding your skill set and/or knowledge will add up, ultimately turn you into a formidable business person, capable of both identifying ways of getting things/projects/ventures done, and implementing them.
In conclusion:
Always remember that, whatever business model you pursue, your internet venture is still a business – and you still deal with real people. As such, the basics of business growth and success do apply – including consistency and persistence.
You can be successful without having any real talent. You can be successful without having any special skills. You can be successful without having any budget to start your online business…
As long as you are consistent and persistent.
