In this day and age of vulgarity, we often see offensive words which are so noxious, even the media won’t touch them. Take, for example, the “N” word. No respectable person would be caught dead quoting it, much less saying it. Even racist people with money only whisper it in quiet settings, amongst their own.
Well today, I’d like to offer to you a word in marketing which is so horrifying to most marketers, that the average blogger will not mention it, much less write a tutorial about it. It’s called, “discipline”. Actually, I almost called it “diligence,” because the word discipline has a severe sound to it….it sounds like this:
“Don’t you EVVVerrrr touch another potato chip for the rest of your life!”
Or, “You haven’t blogged for five days straight, you loser”!
“Are you ever going to get out of bed?” And if you look at those examples, what do you see? Deadlines; the need for commitment; inflexibility.
And so, people shy away from discipline, because discipline doesn’t sell that well. But one thing we’ve all learned is, discipline is important. Because if you take shortcuts, they will catch up with you.
Where I live, the school district had THE WORST grade of any district in the nation. Ultimately, they lost their accreditation. Why? Discipline. And lack of diligence. I talked to my friend Jesse about her daughter not being able to spell “plaid”. She ducked her head and informed me that she herself couldn’t spell. “Jess!” I screamed. (yes…i really screamed). “How can this be?” Jesse was a medical professional who prepped surgical rooms. She carried a medical bag with her and looked like a nurse. She took people’s vitals at church if they were having some issue. I had thought she was an RN. She explained that in school, they kept passing her to the next grade even though she was woefully lost, because she was “a good girl”. While others were cutting class and cutting each other (literally) she was there every morning, bright and shining at her desk. Apparently, the teachers thought, “if ANYone in this circus called a school deserves promotion, it’s her”. I’m sure there’s another blogpost to be written about that reality. But the point I’m making is, graduating Jesse didn’t help her in the long run. It put her in a position where she had gaps. Serious gaps. Embarrasing gaps. And we all have them. When a former vice president of the United States of America spelled potato with an e (potatoe) in front of school children, we all cringed. How did that happen? Gaps. Someone may have advanced him, or accepted payment for college acceptance (something the mainstream media apparently has no clue happens every day, but I digress…). My point is….men in general can’t spell 🙂 No, seriously, poor spelling is not the worst gap a person can have. I’m just saying that when you are diligent, you check your progress along the way. Yes, I know many bloggers can’t spell. At all. That’s not a super big deal when you blog, believe it or not. I’ve seen typos on government websites, even in Bibles. But the higher we go, the more important it is to be diligent.
Here are a few things I have observed, some “gaps” if you will, even with seasoned bloggers. Don’t cringe if you have these.
Missing taglines
“This is an about page”
“Hi, I’m a comment. You can edit me”
“There are no posts on this page” (come on, blogger, put something up there!)
“Did anyone else notice this”? Yea, probably, but no one judged you. We all have gaps, we just don’t talk about all of them because no one’s told us about all of them…yet:)
Now blogger, one thing that I insist you do is, don’t do this- Don’t, i repeat DO NOT crawl under a rock and stay there, if your blog had some gaps, I mean, please don’t do that. I received a very nice letter the other day from someone politely informing that the word juice on a post had been spelled joice, okay? They were gracious and kind, but it still made me scramble. As you go through your blog and find errors, just shake your hand and welcome yourself to the human race. Then keep on blogging!
I would love to know more about everyone who enjoyed this article. Would you please tell me what you are passionate about in life? (say anything!)
Thanks for commenting. Hey, did you like this post? If you did, you’ll love this one on gaps
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