For Success in Blogging, Stir in Some Failure!

Thomas Edison refused to think of his more than 10,000 attempts to create a commercially viable electric light bulb as failures. "I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work," he said. This anecdote is one of many author Robby Slaughter uses in his book Failure: the Secret to Success, to illustrate how failure can serve as an indispensible ingredient in success.

Failure can be an important ingredient in blogging for business, as well.

• Positioning your company as a problem solver
  First, your blog post demonstrates you understand the problems the online searcher is dealing with.  In other words, your success in finding unique solutions probably came through failure. Perhaps you personally went through the same failure stages.  You know how frustrating it was, and your devotion to your business grows out of that experience.

Driving home the other day, I heard a radio commercial for a divorce attorney who deals with male clients.  The professional describes in passionate terms how his own negative experiences had shaped his career, making him determined to help other men avoid some of the heartaches he’d endured.

Or, your blog post tells the story of one customer’s many failed attempts to find a solution, culminating in a happy ending your service or product helped create.

• Positioning failure as a standard by which to understand how a successful outcome would look and feel

  Slaughter writes about four-star New York restaurant Le Bernadin. When it became known that Le Bernadin chefs use cheap, artificially flavored fake Swiss cheese as one of their ingredients, reviewers naturally jumped to negative conclusions.  All that changed after Bernadin’s executive chef explained to Newsweek that the cheap cheese was not used in food, but as a benchmark. Because its taste remains identical all year long, the Swiss cheese gives the chefs a point of reference. 

Often new customers and clients who have never tried a product or service before literally do not know how good yours is – because they’ve never tried your competitors’!  A blog post can compare the less-than-successful results customers experienced in the past before finding you!

For success in business blogging, try stirring in some "failure"!