
In doing research, it is easy to get stuck and bogged down in the midst of all that we are reading, trying to remember, decide what to keep and what to let go of.
Everything that we read influences our thinking and can send our intentions off into a direction that we never thought of before, but, because we are curious creatures by nature, we want to explore those directions more because they seem quite interesting and perhaps even more interesting than that information which we were first investigating. In order to keep this natural human curiosity from permanently derailing our research efforts, I think we need to:
Be very sure of the thing we are researching. It has to be the one word we are looking for in all of the information we read. Even if there is only one sentence in the articles you are reading that reference what you are researching, copy it and put it in a file, preferably an excel file to go over later with all the other one or two liners or paragraphs you have picked up in your research. From these ‘keywords’ you will see a pattern of ideas and thoughts referred to frequently that you can be fairly certain are the ideas that these authors and authorities see as being the definition or take that their readers are responding to most concerning this thing that you are researching.
You then use those keyword phrases to design your articles around. You give them your ’tilt,’ your ‘take’, your ‘bend,’ ‘your lean,’ on the thing you are researching.
Read and understand those longer articles that talk about what you want to research and definitely use those ideas in your writing. But NEVER, NEVER, NEVER copy an article word for word and declare it as your own writing.
You will be sandbagged by Google’s search engines and this article under your name will never be ranked as anything. Plus, it is illegal to plagiarise somone else’s work. So, just don’t do it. It isn’t worth it. Besides, the world is waiting to hear what you have to say. They’ve already heard the other guy. Now, they want to know what your take is on the subject. I think our personalities come through quite remarkably through our writing.
So, don’t be afraid to write your own thoughts using the research already done by others. Remember that it is good to remember that ‘everyone stands on the shoulders of giants,’ whether we know it or not.
Take a look at the following post
It is a scholarly take on the psychology of getting un-stuck, ‘writer’s block.’ He touches on the need to:
- Use scholarly research and the use of unused keywords to build your content around.
- Just write.
Be Emotionally Attached
However, I would like to add to those wonderful suggestions the need to be emotionally attached to your writing. Even if you are promoting a blender. Why not give people a neat little story about the history of blending. We all know what the manufacturers histories about product research and development, but what about the psychology of blending. What about our culture wants to blend everything before we consume it? I know people, my daughter included who wouldn’t think of mixing their food on their plate. For some reason she and other people I know allow no one to mix their food except their stomachs. Now a story like that would be fun and interesting, and it would show that you have thought beyond the monetary aspects of what you are promoting into the history of its benefits. I think that gives a kind of credibility that you know what you are promoting. And it is entertaining as well and helps the consumer perhaps know a little more about themselves and how they prefer to eat their own food.
Research, of any kind takes time.
I’m not going to lie to you, research of any kind takes time. And distractions take away from what precious little time we have to do our research. Beside interesting articles and subjects that distract us in our research of a topic or subject for an article we may be writing, other things can get us stuck as we research the information we want to put into the articles and posts that go into our websites.
- Sometimes it is our relationships, our responsibilities to those who are supporting our work or those things we do to keep us focused on who we are and why we are doing what we are doing every day, whether those things are work related or not.
- Sometimes it is our own motivations that get in our way. Successful entrepreneurs use many guidelines to keep them focused on the tasks that they need to do each day to achieve their goals.
I would like to focus here on just a few things that I have found helpful in keeping me focused on what I want to share of myself and the products and information that I want to promote. I would like to focus on a few of the more psychologically based things that can keep us from getting stuck in our research:
- Work daily to learn and improve your knowledge of yourself and what you are promoting
- Always work to give your customer the best value for their money
- Practice self-awareness
- Time efficiency and managing your relationships properly both inside your business and outside of it.
1. Work daily to learn and improve our knowledge of what we are promoting, whether that is a product or a business.
Even though you think you’ve found the perfect product or business to promote, schedule yourself to do a search of that same product or business at least once a week.
If you’re not totally happy with the product you are promoting, then continue your research daily until you find the right one for you and your passion to-be-proud-of.
Take pride in what you are promoting. Always be looking for improvements in the model you are selling whether or not those improvements come from the manufacturer of the product or business you are now promoting or from some other source. Product manufacturer loyalty is a wonderful quality, but your primary loyalty should be to the satisfaction of the ones who are expecting the quality you promised them when you made them a customer. If a better, newer and more improved product has been developed by another company, don’t hesitate to promote that upgrade to your customers. They will appreciate that you gave them the information without their having to research or ask for it. There should be a never-ending process for everybody who works to achieve true success.
Research and learn from those who are already doing it successfully. It is very important to seek a successful environment to be a part of. Attend seminars and meetings that have to do with learning about or promoting the product or business you are interested in, whether on the internet or in person, because there are many people there who can bring many valuable connections that you can benefit from. Surround yourself with people who are already where you want to be. Read as much as you can about the business you do or the product you sell, and make sure your library is bigger than your TV.
If you are looking for a way to get your thoughts down on the internet and out to the world. If you’re ready to take that step and you want to do it right and you want to do it well, you will need a community to support you every step of the way from concept to creation to publication.
One of the best supportive communities on the internet for testing the quality of your research and the attractiveness of your content and get google rankings for your article at the same time is a community called Wealthy Affiliates.
2. Always work to give your customer the best value for their money.
Now, that sounds pretty much like a formula and not a psychology, but the successful article writer thinks in terms of value to the customer and not primarily profit to himself. And so, as with number 1, successful researchers look for value in the products they are promoting, because they realize that they need to always give their customers the best value that they can.
This means staying away from promoting expensive products just BECAUSE they are expensive and their sale will give them a nice profit or commission.
The definition of value is quality + cost.
Quality takes into account as one reviews the product, its reliability, ease of use, does it do what it is supposed to? Those things come first, then if you can promote the product for a price that your customer can afford or even below what he can afford, then you have given them value. And I don’t care if you are rich or poor, young or old, man or woman, everyone loves to get value for their money. So, if you can truly verify that a less expensive model or business is made with just as much quality as the more expensive model, you will be glad that you promoted the lower priced product.
Truly successful people work to learn and develop themselves. Income is only a tool to achieve that primary purpose. And a person who is passionate about their business or product will always be learning and developing themselves as they learn how to find the best value for their customer and develop their business and products to give their customer that value.
Earlier in this post I spoke about thinking of the psychology of the product you are promoting in an effort to tell an interesting and entertaining story about the product to help people learn a little more about themselves and their own motivations for buying what you are promoting. Some would say that this would take away from the impulse buying that is so very important in the marketplace. I think it will be respecting your customer enough to get them believing that you are thinking of them as people and individuals and that you really are interested in their welfare in the products you promote.
The very best value in the Internet Market World for helping you get your quality ideas and products to a waiting world is the community I am working with. If you have a wonderful idea, come see if we can help you get it out to the world at the best value for you. Click on the icon below.

3. Practice Self-Awareness
This principle goes hand in hand with the previous one because self-awareness leads to respect for oneself and others and then to better choices. Some would say that self-awareness is the absence of ego or, the opposite to ego, but I think that ego serves a purpose. At all stages of development it serves to help us survive. One of the important parts of parental training though and an important element of self-awareness is to teach us how to use our egos to realize that our own survival is dependent upon the survival of other human beings, animals and the health and survival of the earth we live on and everything that grows from it and on it and then to use our egos to help those other people and our earth to survive.
So self-awareness goes beyond becoming aware of our own rather selfish tendencies, to becoming aware of the needs of the world environment that sustains our own life and then developing the capacity to empathize and become compassionate for all that exists. As we challenge ourselves to have compassion for and to understand our customers and what motivates them to purchase the things they do, comes a deeper understanding of how to give them what they need to solve their problems and with that comes a better understanding of the business process and with this customer solution learning process comes the deeper understanding of one’s self.
Some might also say that emotion is the enemy of self-awareness. I think just like ego, emotions also serve a purpose. The are in my experience a great motivator. They motivate us to ‘act now.’ When we or someone we love is in danger, the emotion of fear gets us moving to protect or save that person or object from harm. When we are unhealthy because of loneliness, the emotion of fear again turns into a desire to be with and love another person and we get married and then the desire for joy motivates us to have children or to form strong intimate bonds with other people.
We can experience real joy also as we see our artistic or work efforts appreciated by others. I think we can get bogged down with trying to figure out through thought which decision to make and which direction to take and the hope for.
There is, of course, a place for the science of ‘how to give the customer what they want at the moment they are ready to purchase,’ and you do that as well in your sales content. But thinking of the emotion of exhilaration or relief that comes to us the writer as we overcome an inability to connect with the customer on any level other than product specifications can motivate us into writing and publishing that content after we have thoroughly researched the negatives and positives of what we are promoting and then having connected with the customer through a story, history of the product or anecdote, and take a leap of faith is one of the healthiest things that can happen to us as promoters. We have connected personally. And isn’t that what it’s all about?
I don’t think there is much to learn if we keep ‘the learning about our emotions’ out of the process of our work. I think one of our T.V. program presidents said to his T.V. program secretary something to the effect,’it is not the man who always succeeds who is the hero, but the one who lives with the consequences of his actions who is the real hero.’
Emotions often result from the actions that we or others take in the process of doing business. The more we learn from what we feel at any given time, the more emotional learning will become an internal reality. And the more our emotional reactions become an internal reality, the more your emotional charges are replaced with calmness and focus, the more they can be used to focus and drive our creativity whether that is in our personal or our business lives. Choices come from inside out and never the other way around. If you keep that in mind at all times you get to be proactive instead of reactive. You begin to use your emotions as a motivator instead your emotions confusing and controlling you.
All of the inner work I am recommending can help us discover how much content there is contained within our own emotional experiences. Experiences of struggle, difficulties, successes.
4. Time-Efficiency and Managing your relationships properly, both in business and outside of it
There are many things that can distract us from achieving our goals in writing our blogs:
family, work, hobbies, interests, affiliations, personal responsibilities
I’m a firm believer that if we love what we are working on, and every aspect of that work, even though it may be a challenge in many ways, that work will give us greater creativity and fulfillment and, therefore, the energy we need to give our personal responsibilities, families, affiliations, hobbies, interests and work the quality time that we desire to give them no matter how much time that turns out to be.
As we come to know our niche and what we love about it and why we are passionate about it, we will become more organized and efficient at getting the technical elements of the work of getting that information to others. The more we work at it, the easier it will become. We will then be able to give ourselves the gift of enough time to be with and do what our heart’s desires.
Our niche will give us the strength we will need to give quality time to and with our personal responsibilities and the strength we gain from giving quality time to our personal responsibilities will give us the strength, determination, motivation and inspiration we will need to give to our work.
However, that being said, I think one of the most powerful distractions to getting our niche to run smoothly and efficiently that any of us will have to face are our own motivations that drive us to promote that niche in the first place. Why did we want to promote this niche? Why do we want to continue promoting it? If we want to change our niche why do we want to change what we are doing? How do we find the way to change? How do we find the help and support we need to change?
I put each of the questions that come up in deciding why I chose the niche I did in a separate blog post, unpublished of course, and write my thoughts about them as time permits. It is amazing how many of these thoughts have led to helpful posts for others.
How do we find the help and support we need to change? I think this element is dependent on the 3 elements we have just discussed, that is, when we take into consideration those 3 things outlined above we will choose a niche that serves more than our own desire to amass great amounts of wealth, even if that wealth serves the ones we love and perhaps even serves people whom we don’t know but who need the help.
This ability to think of the welfare of people I don’t even know has quite often been very energizing and motivating. It has kept me going on more than one occasion.We will start thinking about niches that serve future generations and the earth that they will inherit. Even if that help is only a little at first.We will start thinking about how to help people’s human spirits thrive and soar. And that will help our own spirits to soar.
Product Ethics
Eventually, we will begin to see that we are choosing products to monetize our sites that are good for people and the environment.
Are these products being planted, harvested, manufactured, processed or packaged by slave labor or human trafficking?
Or by ecologically sustainable methods?
This aspect of product research is a lot more involved and technical, and I hope to get the information of how to do this kind of research out to you soon. Stay posted.As we look at the things we promote with the kind of critical eye I described above, myself like most people are less distracted either consciously or unconsciously by wondering what this product or business we are promoting may be doing to ourselves, the ones we love, our customers, the environment and, yes, even the people I don’t know. I will feel good about what I am doing and it will give me energy.A few paragraphs above I asked the question:
This aspect of product research is a lot more involved and technical, and I hope to get the information of how to do this kind of research out to you soon. Stay posted.As we look at the things we promote with the kind of critical eye I described above, myself like most people are less distracted either consciously or unconsciously by wondering what this product or business we are promoting may be doing to ourselves, the ones we love, our customers, the environment and, yes, even the people I don’t know. I will feel good about what I am doing and it will give me energy.A few paragraphs above I asked the question:
How do we find the help and support we need to change?That is one very easy question to answer. It’s a site that enables the wanna be into become the successful achiever, whether that is writing (like me) or running a successful on-line business selling shoes or lawn mowing services or computer games and books and videos. Click on the icon below:
Quality + cost = value = quality timeIf you have any comments, please leave them below!Visit my website at www.writingqualitycontent.comemail me at beth@writingqualitycontent.com
All the best,Beth