I never know what to tell people when they want instant gratification in our work together. In a world of people who tell them they can get them they can get a number one ranking in Google, who am I to tell them none of it is a guarantee? Yeah, I’m a bit of a killjoy. Sorry about that!
I realize that this news seems especially disheartening because the internet seems to be the one place in life where we can get instant gratification. There is no such thing as overnight weight loss or a functional happy relationship in one month, yet your online video can get a million hits in a week or in a month, you can double the traffic to your blog.
Here’s the thing though: the reason you hear about sudden instant web successes is that they are very rare. And there is something about lucky breaks that makes great stories.
True life example: I recently heard the story of my boyfriend Dan’s stepfather’s parents. They married after knowing each other a total of five days in Las Vegas. They’ve since had twelve children and have been happily married over 60 years. Great story right? Only this story would have never been told if the marriage hadn’t lasted. I only heard it because it was such a rare and lucky thing.
Most everything in life we know takes hard work mixed in with a luck (usually in the form of good timing). Just like I’ve been working my butt off at the gym the past three weeks to only lose a few pounds, we all work really hard to get those first 200 Facebook fans or 500 blog hits in a week, whatever success looks like online to us. The first while feels almost painful because really it’s about developing new habits and changing our internet mindset.
At a certain point though, you do get some momentum. Suddenly, our inbound links have doubled in four months (I found that mine recently had with me just doing my normal stuff) or you get from 100 to 300 Twitter followers with almost no effort. But from what I’ve seen, there is no shortcut to putting in that important initial time. Of laying the groundwork and doing that other hard stuff.
Why do I make my social media maintenance clients sign a six month contract? Because I need to put in that inital time, and I want them to see the momentum for themselves. This requirement also makes sure I continue to work with people who not only see the value in what I do but who are willing to put the time in. If it’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that instant gratification people are difficult to please because their expectations are inherently unrealistic.
What about you? Do you think your expectations are realistic in terms of web goals? Have you found true online success takes effort like I say?