Having just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, I was struck with the immediate question: who will be the next outliers of the now-turbulent publishing industry? Who will do for the publishing world what Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Bill Joy did for the computer world?

To put this question in context, I refer to Gladwell’s theory. He claims the most successful people in the world don’t just get there by magic fate or raw talent, but rather by an inexplicable blend of opportunity, luck, hard work and timing. (By the way, Outliers is an excellent read.)

While I can’t predict a specific answer to this, I can predict the likely characteristics and scenarios of these outliers, such as:

Age: in the range of mid-30s to early-40s (born ~1967-77). Old enough to respect the print world, but young enough to embrace the web as the next viable publishing platform. Not a 60-something laid-off news editor, and not a 20-something blogger hotshot, but somewhere in between.

Experience: an editor, journalist or writer by trade with work experience in the dot com industry. They’ve worked with web teams long enough to understand the role of other web disciplines like design, development, programming, optimization, analytics, SEO, affiliate marketing, etc.

Knowledge and Skills: writing, editing, content strategy, marketing, social networking, blogging.

Hard Work: 10,000 hours of practice, although The Dip author Seth Godin says maybe 5,000 will do. Need I say more?

Timing: at this moment, the outliers are working on securing a foothold in commercial web publishing. Right now. Not sooner or later, but now.

Opportunity: hard to be specific on this. Understand that the internet has essentially leveled the playing field of opportunity. The cost to publish and market is next to zero, so anyone with enterprise and innovation gets a fair shot to the top. An outliers’ success is no longer contingent on the old boys network, but rather on their—as Gary Vaynerchuk proclaims—passion, patience and hustle. And luck.

Place: the internet, of course. The outliers are active in if not outright leading discussions and rallying followers around their publishing vision. They’re making connections with the right people and cultivating those relationships for future support.

So, who’s it going to be?

Disclosure: the books referenced here contain Amazon affiliate links.

Photo by sektordua.

Who Are the Outliers of Modern Publishing? is written by Charles Bohannan for Wordful.com, a content marketing blog.

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I want you all to know I suffered at the ruthless hands of time and atrophy to bring you this.

We’re talking countless hours spent thinking, writing, scribbling, procrastinating, rewriting, deleting, groaning and starting over—all for a blog post.

Nowadays it’s better. I developed an easy 7-step system that helps me power through my blog writing. I now get it done not just in record time, but with much better efficiency and competence.

So here you go:

1. Get an idea. Ideas are plentiful, and the best way to capture them is to write them down. Fill your notebook with all the ideas that flutter into your consciousness throughout the day. [You do have a notebook or Evernote, right?] Tip: write one-line summaries for your best ideas, then circle them for easy finding when you’re ready to write your post. Then…
2. Write the headline. I lifted this tip straight from Copyblogger, which recommends you write your headline before your content, because “you have the benefit of expressly fulfilling the compelling promise you made with the headline, which ultimately helps to keep your content crisp and well-structured.” Very well stated. Now prepare to…
3. Spill your guts. Otherwise known as writing the first draft, where you need to sell yourself on your own ideas. Isolate yourself from all distractions and write from the heart. Don’t worry about clarity or persuasion or spelling, and don’t get self-conscious — just make sure you write down the essence of your message. Once you’re done spilling…
4. Walk away. Take a necessary break and leave your first draft alone for at least an hour. A day is even better. The time away allows your writing to take root and your mind to refresh. The result: refined perspective. Now you’re ready to…
5. Come back and edit. Editing is tough but powerful. It’s where you make sure your writing is totally clear, accurate and relevant to your audience. It’s also where you strengthen your voice and style and personality. Take the time to edit your post until it’s as perfect as you can get it, then…
6. Add the xFactor. Nobody really talks about this, but I do. It’s something you should do with every post you write. Adding the xFactor is the art of making a good post great, and the difference between presenting yourself as a professional and presenting yourself as an expert. What could you add (or subtract) from your post to make it better than anything anyone has ever read on the subject? Is your post in context with what other people are saying? Does it evolve an idea people believe in? Will it challenge people to take action? Ask yourself these tough questions, then answer them in your post. Now it’s time to…
7. Publish. Don’t underestimate this final step. It calls on your courage to broadcast your ideas to the world. It calls on your responsibility to be accountable for what you say and don’t say. It calls on your conviction to influence, educate and entertain your readers. Like they say — publish or perish.

What do you think? Anything missing or something you’d like to add? Please share in the comments.

7 Steps to Blog Post Perfection is written by Charles Bohannan for Wordful.com, a content marketing blog.

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Wordful.com is now officially 1 year (and a few weeks) old, so let me sum it up: blogging is awesome. It has changed my life, but not quite in the way you’d expect.

Blogging For Dollars: Not So Easy

For starters, I haven’t made one dollar from blogging. This is considered a major failure by many but not to me. More on that in a minute.

The main reason I haven’t made money from blogging is because I find myself at odds with the “make money online” mindset. Many (but not all) marketers in this so-called niche are not actually trying to help you make money, they’re helping themselves make money by selling you something to believe in.

Does “$250,000 per year or more by working just a couple hours per day” sound realistic? This is an actual quote. What part of your psyche do these outlandish offers appeal to?

Any experienced blogger will tell you this claim is next to impossible. Perhaps a tiny fraction of one percent of the population will achieve this–but not likely you or me.

But seeing I wasn’t experienced at the time, and I needed to make money, I fell for it. I purchased the books, subscribed to a cleverly packaged blog training program (it admittedly contains good blogging fundamentals) and followed the masses who were sold the same manufactured dream.

Tempering the Marketer Mindset

Why has marketing become such a ridiculous obsession on the internet? Doesn’t it seem there’s more marketing of things than there are things?

The first months of blogging for me were turbulent. I was trying too hard to sound like an expert—someone to be trusted with other people’s time, attention and money. I lost my voice.

Without a genuine voice, I was becoming nothing more than a hollow marketer.

The first epiphany I had after these initial rough patches helped me embrace publishing for publishing sake. I linked up with colleagues with the same pedigree as me: writers and journalists from the print world who—despite being caught in the crosshairs of a crumbling industry—stood by and defended their editorial integrity.

The truth about blogging and any type of content marketing is this: the content comes before the marketing.

The content is where you’ll find the value. Each and every time. Marketing of course is important, but only if you have something of value to market.

Have Vision, Will Work

So how did blogging change my life in one year?

For starters, I’m no longer under the impression that blogging exists to make money. Money is a by-product of content that’s been fined-tuned for its market.

I’ve also gotten well-educated. I’ve learned that blogging cannot exist without design, platforms (like Wordpress), social marketing, SEO and content strategy. These are all subjects I had no choice but to learn about along the way.

Best of all, I have a vision and a plan for the future of Wordful: commercially branded content. And if you’ve been reading the past couple of moths, you’ll get a sense of what I’m shooting for.

Now the real work begins. Over the next year, Wordful will be focused on leading impassioned communities online. Details on this are forthcoming.

This blog will remain the think tank and conversation hub of my adventures. For you, dear reader, this means more thoughtful, real-world lessons on content marketing, editorial strategy and 21st Century publishing.

Aloha!

How 1 Year of Blogging Changed My Life is written by Charles Bohannan for Wordful.com, a content marketing blog.

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I’m back home now after a rather jolting week in Korea. While the the full impact of the visit hasn’t yet settled in, I have some meaningful impressions worth sharing.

Family Will Be Family

If my previous post was any indication of anxiety and speculation, this post reflects pragmatism and sobriety. In other words, meeting long-lost family in another part of the world for the first time is not that big a deal.

I sat down for an hour and a half with two of my cousins Ko, Se-Shil and Ko, Seon-Gyu at the hotel lobby cafe, and we got to know each other a bit. They were attentive and offered to fill-in for me any missing details of our family.

The Ko family is pretty normal, I learned. We share many of the same aspirations and dysfunctions as everyone else. My grandfather was a bank president, later an artist, fathered seven children and taught himself English. He and my grandmother had a fiery, turbulent relationship, and a couple of our uncles are quasi-destitute.

As far as me being the legendary first-born son of the Ko family, I’m embarrassed to say that was self-imposed hype. To them, I was simply known as “Chucky,” the distant cousin known for being a nice kid and good in math (which is kinda funny because I suck at math).

A few days later in the city of Daejeon, I had dinner with my uncle Ko, Kwan Jin. He was a pretty normal guy, too, talking mostly about what it’s like to do business in Asia and how I—if so desired—could get a piece of the action. For me to do anything, he said, I must first learn to speak Korean.

Totally Homogeneous People

I never understood what homogenized milk is, but I can definitely tell you about homogenized culture. Korean people are extremely homogeneous, meaning they don’t mix with others from outside their country. During my first disorienting day in Seoul, I saw a grand total of two Westerners, and it was unsettling.

There are ups and downs to this. I can’t say which outweighs the other, but having everyone in your country the same ethnicity means very few universal differences. As a result, the Korean people seem cohesive, peaceful and single-minded in purpose.

Koreans are also kind and helpful to outsiders. During many moments of stress, I’d ask a bystander in English for help catching a train or subway and they would offer to carry my bag as they led the way. Everywhere I went, I felt safe (including the smoky underground bar I strayed into near Hongik).

I can’t quite articulate the down side to being in a completely homogeneous culture other than it’s not America. I didn’t realize until I went to Korea that the USA is definitely one-of-kind in a wonderful way. The contributions and influence of every race and shade of person in the world is the cornerstone of our culture. I don’t think we always appreciate this.

Korea was great, but home is where my heart is.

What This All Means

To be honest, I’m uncertain what this trip represents. Is it a one-time hello and goodbye to still distant relatives or is this a newly opened door of opportunity? While it may be easy to choose the latter, keep in mind the work to cultivate this connection is all in my hands.

As it always has been, my Korean family members live very separate lives from me. They are settled in a country that is origin to their entire lineage and ancestry. I am a foreigner in nearly every way, bound only by my mother who left and never turned back 35 years ago.

The only realistic path I see is to slowly teach myself Korean, much as my grandfather taught himself English. Then sometime in the near future I can bring my wife and children to Korea to meet the country and the family.

From there, we could establish a deep and meaningful connection that—without my intervention—may have never existed. One can only hope for these things.

Deep Lessons Learned In Korea, Part 2 is written by Charles Bohannan for Wordful.com, a content marketing blog.

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This isn’t your average Wordful post.

In fact, I’m writing this from a hotel room in Seoul, South Korea, which is quite a change in pace from the warm family life I lead in Hawai‘i.

The reason I’m here now is to take a few days to myself to discover the country of my mother and the ancestors from her side of the family.

Unfortunately, though, the odds of success are against me: I don’t speak Korean and my relatives are–how shall I say–very distant. I’ve never met them or spoken to them until about 3 months ago to make arrangements for this visit.

In fact, my uncle just informed me he can’t make it to see me in Seoul, so I will just be meeting a couple of cousins.

Failing to Plan

Instead of playing tourist, I’ve been playing stranger.

I never took the time before I left to research places to go or stay. Worse yet, I didn’t bring the Lonely Planet Korea guide book my wife gave me for Christmas, bringing instead Chris Anderson’s Free because it wasn’t as heavy to carry (there’s some offbeat irony in that).

I spent the day yesterday wandering around the streets of the Yeoungdeungpo-dong business district, which is home to the Marriott I at random chose to stay at. Even they guy at the bank who exchanged my dollars for won asked me what I was doing in a part of town no Westerners come to.

The banker was right: English is very scarce here and the ratio of Westerners to Koreans is about 500,000 to 1. I’ve been eating poorly, too. Most of the restaurants serve meat (which I don’t eat) and even if they served something else, there’s a certain discomfort from walking into a restaurant alone and ordering from a menu written entirely in hangul.

I took the banker’s friendly advice and took a cab to Hongwi University district last night. Sure, it was more young and lively, but crowded and lonely nevertheless. I reluctantly settled for a $5 plate of spaghetti with meat sauce before lugging back two bottles of soju on the subway back to my room.

Making Bad Assumptions

Another tactical error I made was that of making assumptions. In fact, many errors I’ve made throughout life have been based on poor assumptions. The problem is that bad assumptions often get confused with good intentions.

This time I assumed my relatives would drop what they’re doing to meet the first-born son of my Ko family generation. Give me a break. Who am I to show up after 34 years and demand harmony from our disconnected lives?

I do not entirely understand the story of my mother’s abrupt departure from Korea. There are layers of mystery I will never uncover, but will perhaps have to inevitably accept as precursor to my status in the family.

The Only Redemption Necessary

It’s 10:13 am. I’m looking out the window and the city is waking up.

I think about my Korean grandfather, long deceased, a great man by all accounts. He was a highly respected poet, calligrapher and artist.

I suppose it doesn’t really matter that I don’t speak Korean, that I don’t even feel Korean, or that I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing here in Seoul.

What matters is that I carry his legacy.

Amidst the silence, I feel his presence as I write. He is telling me to forget about my travel frustrations and picky eating, and instead focus on the predilection of writing he and I both share.

Write to live, he tells me. Write from deep within your heart and don’t ever stop. I am deeply comforted by this.

Deep Lessons Learned In Korea is written by Charles Bohannan for Wordful.com, a content marketing blog.

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Tomorrow marks the 1 year anniversary of the Wordful.com blog, and I’d like to share some meaningful lessons on what it means to blog.

Since there was no way I could have known any of this when I started, consider it hard-earned wisdom. This is valuable stuff!

Without further ado:

1. Blogging is not directly about making money. It’s about intellectual real estate and personal branding. If you want to make money online, you need to first build a business, then build a blog to help execute your business strategy.
2. Following the rules sucks. When I first started Wordful.com, I wanted to be a problogger (aka paid internet superstar). All the gurus told me I needed to follow their rules in order to “make it.” The problem is, the rules don’t leave much room for creative innovation. It’s good to know the rules (necessary, actually), but you’ll have to break away from them if you ever want to stand out.
3. I’m glad I stuck with it. There were a few times I was ready to give up on blogging. Maybe it was the loneliness or hopelessness or knowing that nobody cares. I saw many bloggers fall to the wayside over this past year — all their hard work simply abandoned at some months-old post. I’m still going!
4. You need a market. This was the toughest one for me to understand. If you want a group of people to listen to you, be loyal to you and give you their money, then you need to talk about things they want to hear. Things they find useful or entertaining or both. Learn to silence the “commercial vs. artistic” propaganda going on inside your head.
5. There is no magic formula. In the same vein as #2, there is no handbook or easy 12-step program to becoming a successful blogger. I don’t care what they tell you. The reason why is because blogging serves many purposes, and you can’t possibly expect to know what you’re doing with it until you’ve tested the waters.
6. Marketing is almost as important. Your content comes first, but the internet is not The Field of Dreams. It’s not as easy as “If you build it, they will come.” It should read: “If you build it and market it and be generous and stick with and it until you’re about ready to give up in defeat, they might come.”
7. Read the right stuff. Reading the blogs and books of experts in and out of your field gives relevance and context to your own ideas. It also builds a platform of knowledge from which you can pioneer new ideas. The only word of caution about reading is not to turn it into a full-time indulgence.
8. Love it or leave it. If blogging is not enjoyable, or at the very least rewarding, then go find something else to do. This is not to say blogging is not hard work, because it is. This post (my first one) took me over 5 hours to write.
9. Be well connected. This goes with the need to market yourself, but much deeper. Having an online presence–a personal brand–means building real relationships with real people. Yes—it’s all about human connectivity and the powerful social media tools we have at our disposal.
10. Write killer headlines until you’re famous. Assuming nobody cares about you–which they don’t–you have to rope people in to your blog somehow. A great headline makes a tantalizing promise which your content needs to deliver. It’s only when you’re famous can you write nebulous headlines and still have a growing fan base. By the way, Copyblogger is the Ivy League of headline writing.

Do any of you have something to add to this? We’d all love to hear it in the comments below.

10 Lessons in Blogging Learned the Hard Way is written by Charles Bohannan for Wordful.com, a content marketing blog.

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After years of gawking over web design, flash animation, scripting languages and relational databases, I think we can now safely agree the internet is made of and for content (it’s King alright). It’s the impetus for nearly all innovation on the web.

But if you’re a content specialist like me, the career path feels a lot like the Wild West: opportunistic (make thousands a day from home with Google!), risky (do I blow my next paycheck on the latest and greatest blogging course?) and discouraging (out of work writers/journalists/editors).

Thankfully a few qualified content specialist genres exist. Let’s briefly examine them:

Content Strategist

The content strategist strikes me as a cerebral editor type concerned with things like style guides and editorial execution. Many of them work behind-the-scenes for large Fortune 500 brands (like eBay) or savvy web consultancies (like Razorfish).

Pros: Disciplined, serious and passionate about all things content. Put content before marketing. Understand digital medium.
Cons: Seeming obsession with self-definition and taxonomy, less focus on marketing makes them better as consultants or part of a large team.

Blogger

Bloggers are content renegades, pioneers who constantly test new waters to see what works and what doesn’t. A few bloggers have figured out how to go pro and earn a sizable living from their blog. Elite bloggers often achieve internet marketing celebrity status.

Pros: Fresh and energetic, highly innovative, influential and fluid. Profitable self-publishers and effective guerrilla marketers.
Cons: Lacking in editorial discipline; usually put monetization and marketing before content and publishing; easy come, easy go.

Media Industry Professional

These are the writers, journalists and editors — the talent pool of content specialists. They’ve been hit with tough times that include mass layoffs, corporate restructuring and severe underpay.

Pros: Very savvy writers and editors who are experienced, educated and well-connected in the publishing industry.
Cons: Jaded, slow to adapt new content business models, many stuck in stodgy newspaper mentality.

What about ‘Branded Content Marketer’?

I know it’s an unusual term, but what I’m getting at is someone who publishes niche content in a commercial capacity under the umbrella of their “content brand.”

So let’s say Wordful starts publishing and monetizing several content-rich websites for niche audiences. The websites become popular based on their own merit as well as the merit of Wordful brand. Kind of like a highly-decentralized media company.

It’s certainly a gamble, but I’m convinced it can be done given the right mindset and resources. Of course what I’m hinting at here is a hybrid of all three content specialists mentioned above. You’d need the discipline of the content strategist, the innovation of the blogger and the experience of the media industry professional.

Is anyone else picking up on this besides me [ and Jonathan Kahn of Lucid Plot who makes a brief but notable mention at the very end of  his article, Content Strategy for the Web Professional]?

Where Content Marketing Meets Branding is written by Charles Bohannan for Wordful.com, a content marketing blog.

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Be a publisher first, marketer second.

When your content is stellar, your marketing become easier. Certainly not the other way around. Keep a healthy, obsessive focus on this.

Actually do something.

Stop talking. Go out and build a site around some great, marketable content. Publish it. Get people passionate about it. Sell them something cool. Measure it. Do it again.

Be experimental.

There are a few emerging theories on content strategy and marketing, but it’s your job to go out and test them as well as try out some of your own stuff. Content marketing is a slowly blossoming industry and now is the time to take some chances.

Limit your consulting.

This may sound strange to some, but I see more value in setting up your content marketing business as a B2C rather than B2B. This means building content-rich sites for consumers rather than helping other businesses set up their own websites. There’s higher risk but much higher reward.

Think Big, Act Big

If you can build one successful site, you can probably build another. And another. And another. And so on. Pretty soon you could be sitting on a small publishing empire.

Imagine the possibilities.

How to Walk the Walk of Content Marketing is written by Charles Bohannan for Wordful.com, a content marketing blog.

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When you hear the term “blogging” or “blogger,” does it resonate as credible publishing? Or amateur hobby?

I sense that most people still regard blogging as personal hobby or marketing enhancement, or both (which is okay), but not the lucrative game-changer of the publishing industry. This is about to change, and here’s why:

The Future of Blogging

Blogging has its roots in personal publishing and more recently—paid personal publishing. We need to brace ourselves for what’s next.

Modern blogging won’t be the same from what it is today, but the fundamentals will remain: niche sites with excellent content and aggressive self-branding.

The first thing this shift will eliminate is the romantic notion of the “Problogger”—the average blogger guy turned celebrity millionaire blogger. In its place will appear the savvy entrepreneur-editor.

So while “print is dead” may be the laughing stock now, the publishing industry demise won’t last forever. Keep that in mind.

Stigma, Stigma, Stigma

Blogging suffers from amateurish stigmas, like:

The Soapbox

Blogs as diaries, filled with personal rants and raves and daily musings. There’s certainly nothing wrong with free expression of the individual (after all—it’s how blogging began), but it’s not going to withstand the enterprise of free markets.

Luckily more people are migrating their personal lives to microblogging spots like Facebook and Twitter, so it’s not as much of an issue. But still…

Make Money Online

If I see another blog about how to make money or how to become some kind of guru online, I’m going to vomit and rabbit-punch my face at the same time.

Soon after blogging took off and a few guys made some money at it, everyone thought they could come in and do it, too. Then they discovered the way to make money was by telling people how to make money. Update: there’s no long term strategic value in that model, especially when its saturated.

The MMO movement is not a bad model, but it’s an incomplete one. Blogging can and should make money but only if there’s real, viable content for a loyal and passionate audience. Most (not all) of the MMOers so far are dime-a-dozen used car salesman type with a penchant for fast cash.

Amateur Night

Even the few bloggers who are focused, diligent and worthy of their title will be up against the heavy hitters—companies with deep publishing experience and staff with the resources and talent to outshine and outmarket the small guys.

For the independent blogger, this leaves two options. They either compete against bigger budget teams and editorial standards or join them. Yes, blogger: you may soon be assimilated.

‘Content Marketing’ is a Great Start

I give credit to Copyblogger’s Sonia Simone for officializing the phrase “Content Marketing.” It means building a business around publishing content people love and are willing to pay for.

The only shortcoming in that buzzword is that it doesn’t  strongly connect the blogging/web marketing genre with the long-established principals of publishing and editing.

So maybe in a few years, we’ll just go back to calling it publishing.

Blogging Needs a Sharper Image is written by Charles Bohannan for Wordful.com, a content marketing blog.

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Test Post – Please Ignore is written by Charles Bohannan for Wordful.com, a content marketing blog.

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