This was hilarious and so so true. I used to be in this “ahhh new thing everyone is doing… I have to do it” type of mindset and leaving that behind was so freeing. The hard part was figuring out what I wanted to be my strategy… but once I did that hard work of thinking and trial and error… it was the best thing I could have done!

LOVE THIS.

I was definitely confusing strategy with tactics and that led to burn out. One of the biggest challenges of blogging is shutting out the noise of “this is the next big thing to make you the best blogger ever”! Now that I have a defined strategy and list of tactics it is the filter which has calmed all of the noise. It is the filter that helps me work less but more confidently/focused. Thanks for helping me focus Jeni! You saved my blogging sanity.

Love this! Jeni helped me get off the blogging hamster wheel of 3 posts a week and endless social media – what a huge relief! She also taught me the value of doing some deep investigation into my target market to understand what it is that would really help them – and make them mad crazy for my blog! Yes, it is possible to Blog Smarter!

I couldn’t agree more. Even though this school of thought rocks a lot of blogger boats, I ask you: Is what you’re doing really working? Like you want it too? There’s more than one way to reach your blogging goals and running on the hamster wheel of sharing threads and link parties is an area I’m glad to avoid.

Yes I’m trying to win the war! Need to let go and change some things up. Great points made in this article.

Well, I expect that what you wrote here may ruffle some feathers, but as always you are wise and see the big picture. I can’t keep up with the next big thing and also nurture my family. It’s not possible to keep up with all the changes in social media and still write well and get any sleep. I’m a slow learner but am starting to come around to your ideas of thinking about what makes sense and not just chasing page views. (oh, and it’s working!)

Thank you for writing this post! It was just what I needed. Not only do I worry about trying to stand from other other bloggers in my niche, but I also worry about how to get the word out that I exist. This will definitely help me in creating my strategy.

Ah, Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding – who can forget them? Both ladies have gone on to do some very interesting things though I think it was tactics without a strategy, Jeni. What you’ve described is so true.

While we go scrambling for tactics off the internet, keeping our reader’s preferences in mind for absorbing our content is important too. For example, mine aren’t into videos – they want images and ebooks. Interestingly, I was having the very same conversation with another business coach earlier today about how noisy Facebook had become with videos and Live filled newsfeeds. 🙂

You hit it out of the park! Shared with my entire biz group!

Great thoughts, Jeni. I was just reading this morning about how business is really a big board game and the rules are constantly adapting, with millions of players affecting the game constantly. Why you play the game (strategy) is more important than how you play the game (tactics).

And by the way, the Kerrigan-Harding incident was at the US National Championships, not the Olympics, just to let you know. But you were close, timewise. Heck it was 22 years ago so I’ll give you credit. 😉

Jeni, you just put into words something I’ve been struggling with for a long time. Increasing frustration with chasing numbers and trying to keep up with social media mood swings. Just a few months ago I started focusing on creating my own products and focusing on my life coaching services. I’m not making money, yet, but I am getting to know my customers better so I can provide what they need

This is such a great reminder for me as I sit here feeling overwhelmed that I am not on the latetest and greatest social media imagining how it will lead to my demise. I need to focus on my strategy and not the tactics!

Brilliant, as always, Jeni. This is such an important distinction and few people can put it so eloquently. Your advice on this path has long been an integral part of my success. I’m definitely always a work in progress as the ‘tactics’ sometimes pull at me. The key for me is to stay focused and keep on the strategy path. Thank you for writing this.

Thanks for this. I think I knew it, yet didn’t. I’ve always felt that only if a strategy would help me to achieve my goals in a way
that fits with my ethics was it worth doing, so this point really resonates with me: “If your strategy doesn’t fit with the LIFE you want, then it doesn’t matter if it “could” get you to your goals…it’s a bad strategy for YOU.”
At the start of this year, I felt I needed a clearer strategy and some effective tactics to promote my blog and books, so have taken a few courses. I quickly dropped out of one course because the tactics would have left me exhausted, and the strategy didn’t fit with my own goals. Until I read this post, I hadn’t seen it in terms of tactics and strategies.
I think still I need to get clearer about what does and doesn’t fit with my goals so thinking about it in terms of tactics and strategies is helpful, thanks!

Still trying to wrap my brain around this concept! I feel like I am at a place where I realize the difference in tactics and strategy; however I am still gaining the focus I need. The Biz Mavens subscriber emails are certainly helping to point me in the right direction, though!! 🙂 thanks!

*Cry in the bathroom at blog conferences.* !!! Oh, how I have been there, except it was for business coaching conferences. Gotta love the challenges of being a super introverted, highly sensitive entrepreneur. Thank you for making me laugh today and for your refreshing take on tactics that are over-hyped these days. I’ve had to remind myself many times to ignore the latest shiny object being blasted in social media land and focus on doing what aligns with me and what I want my business and life to be like. Brilliant insights, Jeni. Thanks for sharing.

I feel lucky that I realized this early on, but sometimes feel the pull to fall back into the trap of chasing rather than paving my own way so this was a fantastic reminder. So glad to have you back in my inbox Jeni!

Very helpful, Jeni! I’m going to share with my small mastermind group. We all want to grow our blogs (and income, in the process), but are homeschooling mommas and need to keep our hours under control. Strategy vs. Tactics will make a great discussion, especially with the ever-changing (and can-never-win-at) game of social media.

Ha ha ha – love your humour 🙂 Thanks so much for the hints…I mean tactics and strategies 🙂 Kylie
http://ripperresources.blogspot.com.au/

Ahh social media…how I love to hate you. I’m willing to try the new and shiny things but as soon as I start to feel overwhelmed or like I’m wasting my time, I have no problem breaking up with that latest thing (ahem Periscope).
However, I must confess that I’m not good at strategy or tactics. I want to be a good blogger but my real life comes first. If I become stressed at all I have to do and feel like I’m juggling the family and the blog, the blog has to be the first ball the drops. Know what I mean?

I’ve read some good blogging posts but it’s not often that the whole time I’m reading a post I’m trying to figure out how I can share its awesomeness with other bloggers!

Thank you.

This article really helps me to find out what is my goal of blogging. However, making a video and post it to facebook is very hard to me. I cant make a video. Did you write a tutorial?

Words of wisdom. Thank you!

I had the biggest light bulb moment of my entire entrepreneurial career after reading this blog post! Thank you, Jeni!! xx

Focused. Simple. Strategic. Purposeful. SMART. Thanks for being a calming and smart presence in the CRAZY of blogging. I love my simplified blog and how it truly targets those walking my same journey. Building relationships and offering what they need regardless of numbers is a breath of fresh air. Thanks again for writing and teaching and helping us off the hamster wheel!

Love this post! Not only because it references military history but because it encourages people to think like a grand strategist. Another good way to look at it: tactics are the arrows, strategy is the bow. Words of wisdom that I’ll definitely be mulling over for a bit.

Thanks, Jeni.

This is great stuff. I’m on my second year of blogging for our farm market and I’ve found that keeping a calendar allows me to write more. It also allows me to stay ahead with my posting schedule!

Wow, you hit it right out of the ball park here! I couldn’t agree with you more. If we only depended on social media to get the word out about our blog, then how great of a blog is it anyway? I’m not saying sharing a post we love is wrong, but let’s remember back to a time where social media didn’t exist. Peoples blogs were still being read. I think back then they were called virtual articles. Social media outlets are tricky, if they don’t like you for whatever reason, they’ll shut down your account, then where will you be? Where I am right now. Instagram shut me down numerous times for doing nothing wrong and I withdrew myself from Facebook because they own instagram and I don’t care for the platform. This leads me to find other avenues to promote my blog and you know what? I’m finding organic growth to be a lot more satisfying then social growth.

A friend told me about your blog, and I’m SOOOO glad she did. After health issues, I haven’t been able to blog as much so I’ve had to decide to use my time wisely. PLUS, I’m tired of the social media rat race. It’s always changing and I can’t keep up. Needed to hear this! Thanks!

great article jeni! your tactics are my “action items”. or maybe under the tactics are the action items. still can’t believe tanya harding did that. seriously how can you be a professional athlete (and figure skater to boot) with those morals?

wise AND encouraging. Thanks!

Hi Jeni,

This article rocks. And I can say that this is beyond blogging as the teaching above can apply to anything in life.

I learn a lot. And am going to rethink my strategies and tactics.

Thank you for this insight.

Woolker

Jeni-

I’m new to your family. But I like the way you think already.

Many website owners also aren’t aware social media slows down their website. Heavy web parts. Speed is part of user experience. (Speed doesn’t help your SEO. A myth. Just UX.)

Facebook is usually the worst social-speed offender. When it “misconnects,” the error adds up to a second –or more– to your page load time. That delay doesn’t sound like much. The “professional” goal is a two-second load time. So Facebook gobbled up half your performance budget.

You have a sane PDF tip. You’ve said: Facebook sucks away your audience into Facebook-la-la land. Great common sense. But people “go with the herd” mentality that social is always good. It isn’t.

So what about Pinterest? Examine the return on investment (ROI). For example, on your site home page, 10 percent of the page weight is Pinterest assets. Not bad. Yet, those have a potential cumulative delay of 800 milliseconds. That is relative to a worst-case-scenario of 6-second load time.

With a 2-seconds Pingdom best-case-scenario speed test then Pinterest is 40 percent “waste.” Nasty. But, your home page loads in about 4 seconds (WebPagetest.org).

The saving grace is most of your Pinterest assets load in parallel, making things faster. Still, potential connection failures exist.

Is LeadPage service indicating Pinterest is a “good deal” for you? Does Pinterest provide value?

And what about “that” invisible LeadPage? It’s only 3 percent of your page weight but adding almost 2 seconds and 12 requests. Wow! It’s the worst speed drain on your site. More than all images!

BOTTOM LINE: When you add “stuff” to your website, keep in mind the impact on speed. Do some testing to verify. Especially social media.

This is such a great post! The Roman analogy is so good. Thank you for this encouragement!

You are awesome! I have put off my blog idea for years because as blogging became popular it became so much WORK! The exact work you’re talking about, multiple social media accounts, constant posts, all these things I didn’t want to dedicate my time too. I just want to make things, talk about them, and maybe sell some. I don’t want to post live videos, or have an instagram or….. A few months ago i decided to stop putting off my idea and get started. Then recently decided it was time to stop playing and start getting serious, and thank God your blog was the first one I found!! You are speaking my language. Just being reminded that I can do it the way I want, people over posts, and accomplish my goals. You’re awesome. Thanks for inspiring me and keeping me from the blog I didn’t want but thought you had to have.

Hi Jeni,
I’m new to following your blog and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made. You give advice that I didn’t even know I needed to hear! I’ve dabbled with my blog for 6 months, but decided to take it seriously in the past few weeks. I appreciate your differentiation between strategy and tactics-I’ve definitely been focused on tactics. That’s always my problem though, I am much more of a details person than a big picture person. (:

I will work on writing out my strategy and tactics this weekend. Thanks again for the insight!

Jessica

Ha! Not enough people use European Conquerage as a metaphor for blogging! I’ve actually been thinking about this exact same topic ever since I started reading your blog Jeni (also sidenote, I sent you a message last week via your contact form – would a comment be easier?) . I’ve been concentrating on improving my authority, which is a necessary tactic at this point, by writing easily shareable blog posts… but those blog posts don’t necessarily attract the new beginner type people I want to sell products to. So I’m trying to get around that… maybe I need to alternate content, I’m not sure.

I’m also struggling with the relationship building part of my blog, I really want to create a community similar to what the US has, but it’s just so tricky, I’m not sure if my target market spends much time on forums as opposed to social media.

Anyway, the gist of my whole comment is; great post, really helps cut through the noise. Thanks!

I needed this! It’s been awhile since I laughed so hard…I am definitely confusing tactics for strategy! You’ve given me a lot to think about.

I’m in year one of blogging (bliss?…battle?…both!) I tried a lot of those tactics and one by one they have gotten me… nowhere. So I’ve decided to do what I did at my 9-5 to climb the ladder and that was to simply be helpful, be dependable and stay away from drama:] This post was confirmation on that decision. Thanks for sharing!

This is a great post! So true! Yet so difficult though, to find your own special path – strategy – when most people you see are running in one direction. How did you decide on your strategy, Jeni?

Although I’m new to blogging, I’m no novice in the Social media world. I have only used it privately though, but after reading this I might have an idea or two cooking 😉

THIS. OH MY GOODNESS. Thank you for posting this! I feel like this is an answer for questions I had that I didn’t even know how to put in words.

I have seriously been researching, feeling like I was missing something. Somehow, the puzzle pieces didn’t seem to fit. Reading this has given me a lot to think about, a lot of clarity. Thank you for posting! So helpful!

Every time I get one of your emails in my inbox I get so excited (and so so overwhelmed!) knowing that I’m about to learn so much more about what I am currently NOT doing at all! Haha! New to the blogging community, I feel like I am LIGHTYEARS behind the blogging train. But I’m working on it… day by day…

Girl. It’s like you read my mail. I have tactics galore, but my strategy is thin. I need to fix that, and your site is a treasure trove. Thank you!

Thank you Thank you Thank you! I’ve been working on my blog for years. I’m on the first page of Google for my Niche, under multiple categories, written 23 books on the subject and still not making any money! Arrggg! So glad I found your blog. Can’t wait until you have your next training session. I’m planning to be front and center.

Well…this is simply the most brilliant post I have ever read on the topic of blogging. Thank you, so much.

I really only just found your website last week. (A friend referred me to you.) But I’m soaking in every email and reading everything you send to your list.

In a week, I tore down my blog and started all over again. I changed my strategy because of you. And I’ll be choosing more appropriate tactics, once my content is completed.

Thank you, so much! I can’t wait until your course next opens its doors!

This is a complete mind-shift change, and I love it! “If your strategy doesn’t fit with the LIFE you want, then it doesn’t matter if it “could” get you to your goals…it’s a bad strategy for YOU. ” Wow. So thankful my friend, Lynna, shared your site, podcast, and emails with me! I can’t wait to learn more!