Image from BigStock Photo.

This is the 3rd part in a series on Screencasting. Check out the previous post in the series: How to plan a Screencast or start at the beginning: How to Create Professional-Quality Screencasts.

Scripting for Screencasts

Nobody wants to sound like an idiot when they make a recording. You want to sound like you know what you’re doing. It’s really easy to make mistakes and commit all manner of presentational sins when you try to make a screencast with no script.

What do I mean by scripting? Do I mean you actually write a script? Everything you’re going to say?

In some cases, yes. This depends on your presenting skills and ability and your ability to sound natural when you read out loud. Don’t believe for a moment there is any kind of “natural talent” in this. With practice, anyone can improve. Even if you’ve failed the first round of American Idol auditions.

What you don’t want to sound like:

• Unsure of yourself
• Hesitant
• Self-conscious
• Boring
• Stiff and forced, unnatural
• Mumbly
• Mouth-noisy or nose-breathy (pardon the highly technical jargon)
• Crazy or manic (laugh if you want to, but I’m halfway serious, here—people get weird ideas about how they’re “supposed” to sound)

What you do want to sound like:

• Confident
• Friendly
• Un-selfconscious
• Clear
• Engaging
• A boss

Whether you sound good or bad in a screencast has little to do with whether or not you write out an entire script and read it out loud… or simply speak as you operate while recording. You can have a fully-scripted screencast that sound stilted and false… or that sound professional and clear. You can have an “on the fly” screencast that sounds like the presenter can’t even string two cohesive ideas together… or that sounds as natural as if you were speaking with a friend in a bar.

If you write out a full script, it’s more likely you’ll say what you mean to say in the correct order, but you have a higher chance of sounding self-concious. If you “wing it,” it’s more likely you’ll sound conversational and un-selfconscious, but also that you’ll exhibit annoying nervous patterns, make mistakes, and ramble.

Neither method is better than the other: it totally depends on what works best for YOU. Try your hand at both methods and see for yourself. Both can be done well with practice.

The Blended Approach: You can also have a list of points (you should already if you planned your screencast correctly) and you can riff off of those, which will have the benefit of being guided and cohesive, but with a more natural-sounding final result than simply reading off a script word-for-word.

Elements Every Script Needs

Every script, no matter how tightly or loosely you do it, needs the same structure and elements:

• Introduction: Greet the viewer and introduce yourself by name and give your website URL. When people see your video on a third-party site such as YouTube you need to provide context.
• State the learning objective: Tell viewers what they’re going to learn and why it will be of benefit to them.
• Go through the steps of the main content: Obviously.
• Restate the objective and benefit: Something like, “Now that you’ve learned X, you can accomplish Y more easily than ever.”
• Say goodbye: Give your name and URL again at the end of the screencast and say goodbye. I will often remind viewers as well to click “Like” on the video if they enjoyed it. This only matters if your video is on YouTube.
• But we’ll meet again: You don’t want this to be the only time someone watches your content. Let the viewer know you’ll “see them next time” or that you’ll “see you again soon.”

How to Actually Write Your Script

• Use whatever word processor you like
• Use paragraph breaks to indicate pauses in speech
• Make the font big enough to read on the screen while you’re recording

Recording Audio for Screencasts

You have two choices when it comes to recording audio for screencasts:

• Use the built-in audio recording capabilities of your screen-recording software
• Use a separate program

Using a separate program gives you a couple distinct advantages:

• It’s made for recording and editing sound, whereas screencast recording software will only have rudimentary controls and features.
• You don’t have to worry about accidentally messing up the video as you try to edit the audio.

I recommend Audacity for Windows. It’s free, open source software and it works beautifully. You will want to export your projects as mp3 files, but this ability does not inherently come with Audacity. The reason why is that the mp3 file format is not open source. However there is an add-on you can use to give you this capability, which goes by the funny name of Lame.

If this sounds like it’s starting to get complicated, don’t worry. Instructions for how to set up Audacity and Lame exist online and it’s easy.

You can get Audacity for the Mac, but Macs come with Garage Band already. If you find Garage Band intimidating or to be overkill, you can get a Mac version of  Audacity. I find Audacity extremely simple to use for screencast recording—it does a lot, too, but you won’t need most of it and the interface is not very threatening.

How to Actually Record your Screencast Audio

• Put your script in one part of your monitor or print it out and have it in hand.
• Put your audio recording software in another part of your monitor (or if you have two monitors, one in each monitor).
• Hit “record.”
• Start talking: read your script or loosely follow your points.
• If you mess up: you don’t have to start over. Just pause your speaking (not the controls) and then pick back up again. Later you can edit out your flub.
• Record several different takes in different styles: try being faster, slower, more boisterous or more intimate. Pick the one you want to run with.
• If you feel like you’re sounding forced and stiff as you read, keep creating takes until it sounds more natural. Or until it all deconstructs into a mental cacophony of circular logic like some kind of nitrous oxide trip (I recommend stopping before this point).

Recording Tips

• You want the quietest environment possible in which to record. While it may sound funny, hiding in your closet with your laptop, microphone and tons of sound-absorbing clothing really isn’t such a bad idea! You definitely don’t want to be in a room where sound reverberates. If you have loud family members, a good solid strip of duct tape across the mouth may be necessary. If you think they might peel it off, use some on their wrists, too.
• You don’t want any surface vibration to reach the microphone. It’s best if you can put your mic on a spring-loaded articulated boom to hold it near your face. If you only have a desk stand or tripod for your mic, place it on top of a folded towel or a couple of old mouse pads to absorb vibration.
• Use a pop filter. A pop filter is a scrim or cloth that goes between your face and the microphone. The purpose of a pop filter is to prevent the little puffs of air from “popping” consonants from hitting the recording surface of the mic (like the letter “p” or “t”).  It often looks like black pantyhose stretched over a circular wire frame. You can buy these or you can improvise.  Simply draping a piece of cloth or some craft foam over your microphone will work—although it will look completely stupid.
• Make sure your chair doesn’t squeak or groan or otherwise make any noise. Especially noises that sound like bodily functions or wild animals, because the worse they sound the more likely it is your mic will pick that up. That is a fact of the universe.
• Do not rub or scratch your face or touch the microphone directly, these sounds will also be picked up (especially if you have a beard or stubble) and be very annoying to listeners.
• Keep some water on hand.
• Make sure your nasal passages are clear. You don’t want any “whistling booger sounds” to be in your audio.

Editing Your Screencast Audio

As is, your audio—though it is recorded—is not ready to be in your screencast just yet. You have to edit it. How the hell do you edit a digital audio file? What do you do? This is what Audacity or Garage Band can do for you. The audio track is presented in the form of sound waves in a time strip. You can click and drag along it and cut, copy, paste, apply effects or whatever. Here are the steps I take with mine:

• Noise removal: the background noise of fans or humidifiers or just ambient white noise needs to be edited out. To do this, you have take a sample where there is only background noise and then run the noise removal feature of your recording software. Combined with having a good microphone, this will dramatically improve the sound of your audio portion.
• Editing out vocal mishaps: It’s easy to see the spike in the sound wave on the editing timeline when you say “um” or accidentally make any sound you don’t want. In most audio editing software, it’s a simple matter to click and drag to select the offending portion and then delete it.
• Adding or removing blank space: Sometimes you speak too quickly and other times you may have paused for quite a bit in order to recover from a flub or to get your bearings. You can insert swaths of silence or remove dead spots in your audio to improve the pacing. You want to have only about one second of blank space before you begin speaking and after you are finished speaking.

That’s it, there’s really not much you have to do with the audio.

You might be wondering about intro music or whatever, but the truth is that stuff gets added in separately later (if at all) when you are editing the video in your screencasting program. That is not a part of this piece of audio.

The Next Part in This Series:

We’ll be going over Recording and Assembling Your Media Collection for a Screencast.

Any questions or comments? Leave ‘em below! Did you enjoy this? Make sure you signed up to receive updates in the form below so you don’t miss anything.

I use the Digg Digg social media sharing plugin because it rawks, but it takes a bit of setting up. So I thought I’d make a little tutorial video to walk you through it step by step. If you can’t see the video, visit the blog directly or watch it on YouTube.

I do more than just show you the bare minimum to get it installed and running. In this video you will also get some good info about why you may want to do certain things, like allow the Digg Digg buttons to appear on your home page or manually configure them.

In this WordPress tutorial video (about 8 minutes), I show you some really easy tips for customizing the WordPress Admin area and the post writing page:

• How to show or hide content boxes
• How to rearrange content boxes
• How to customize some of the settings

This is a guest post by Nathan Hangen. Be sure to let him know what you think of it in the comments!

Businesses rely on trust and authority to survive. If your customers don’t trust you or believe that you have the goods, then they aren’t going to buy from you.

Big corporations generally don’t suffer from this because they have money to throw around. This allows them to create the illusion of authority, which for most people is good enough. Small businesses though, especially those based solely on the internet, don’t have it quite so easy.

Overcoming these issues can be tough for new businesses especially, which is why blogs are such an excellent marketing vehicle. Over time, you get the chance to display your knowledge and expertise, winning your prospects over one by one.

It works.

From Slow to Fast

The problem though, is that it takes time. You have to keep your foot on the pedal and keep grinding away until you reach critical mass or the level at which word of mouth and buzz marketing takes over for you.

Considering that sales are the lifeline for any business, the longer this process takes, the more you’ll struggle to improve that bottom line.

But what if I told you there was a way to speed up that process, and build trust and authority almost overnight? What if I told you that you have access to a resource that can not only help you create social proof, but was also free?

Sounds good, right?

Let Your Customers Speak for You

Well, the good news is that if you’ve ever sold a product or service, then you’re in luck, because all you need in order to take advantage of this strategy is customers.

Sure, you can let your web copy or direct mail convert your leads into clients and customers, or you could simply let your satisfied customers do it for you. Consumers trust each other more than they trust the guy trying to make a sale, so it’s a natural fit.

By placing your customers in front of your prospects, they immediately put down their guard and listen to the message, and not the methods. As an example, just take a look on Amazon.com or any other site that lists product reviews. I don’t know about you, but when I’m considering a purchase, I scroll through the reviews before I do anything else. If they’re good, then I move on to the product details, and eventually…become a customer.

The same is true for your products or services. Reviews speak louder than bullet points.

How to Get the Goods

The easiest way to do this is to simply ask for a review, but if you haven’t been building an email list, then it’s going to be tough to reach your customers…so make that a priority if you haven’t already. You could also use a simple contact form on your website that allows customers to submit reviews. Contact Form 7 is a great plugin for this.

You could also open up for comments on your product pages, and let the reviews come in uncensored, which might sound scary at first, but proves that you aren’t hiding anything.

The big kahuna

Although text reviews are great, the most powerful reviews are those in audio or video format. When prospects can see and/or hear your satisfied customers, they are much more likely to identify with them. Video reviews especially, are an extremely powerful way to create social proof and disarm those that are loaded with objections.

Incentive

If your customers aren’t biting, consider offering an incentive in exchange for a review, such as a discount coupon or a free sample of another product. I’ve had success just offering to link to their blog or website on my review page.

However, if you’ve really delivered and your customers are satisfied, then you should have no problem getting at least a few reviews.

Create a showcase

Reviews are only powerful if they are easy to find, so highlight them whenever possible. Link to them on all of your sales and product pages, and consider embedding them in the sidebar or footer of your blog. Create a separate page just for customer testimonials. Make them easy to find…first impressions mean everything.

The Authority Hack

I know this sounds simple, but the truth is that most people aren’t tapping into their biggest resource, and it’s costing them time and money. Your products are great and your customers are happy, so why not show them off? The more you have the better you’ll be, especially if you can get your hands on a few video or audio reviews.

Reviews act as the social proof needed to convince your prospects to give you a shot. They help struggling businesses get over the hump, and help strong businesses become even stronger.

So, what are you waiting for?

Nathan Hangen is an entrepreneur, social media consultant, and co-authored the book Beyond Blogging. You can follow him on Twitter @nhangen.

To put it simply, Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer is absolutely the business. If you’re using Windows XP or Vista as your operating system (no Macs), you need to give this blog software a try. It’s a free download from Microsoft.

This video shows you everything you need to know about how to use Windows Live Writer blog software to write posts on your blog. If you can’t watch it in your email or reader, watch it on Viddler or the blog.

Windows Live Writer Features

• Works with any popular bogging platform (WordPress, Blogger, TypePad) and even some not-so-popular platforms (Microsoft) , which saves you from dealing with the quirks of multiple platforms.
• Write posts, pages, create categories/labels, and insert pictures for multiple blogs from one application, which saves you a lot of time. Like, I couldn’t possibly overdo this point, so I’ll just leave it at that.
• Can have more than one copy of Windows Live Writer open at the same time, which makes it easy to copy from one window and paste into another.
• Image uploading is a joy instead of a nightmare, and this alone would make the software worth paying for, but it’s free.
• You get cool stuff like picture special effects and easy video embedding.
• You can reuse links by adding them into the link glossary, which saves tons of time.
• You can download and install extensions that enhance and extend the functionality of Windows Live Writer.

One word of warning: Microsoft is Microsoft, after all, and they treat this program like bait. They will try to get you to sign up for or download other Microsoft Live services and stuff you probably don’t want. So be careful: read the prompts carefully and make sure you know what you’re agreeing to and downloading. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s easy to not pay close enough attention to what you’re doing. I’m very happy with this software, and I use it daily. It saves me huge amounts of time and makes my in-post pictures look great.

WordPress tags: To create WordPress tags, click on the little double arrows to expand the category/publish date bar at the bottom. In the expanded area, you’ll see a field for “keywords.” That’s where you can put tags for a WordPress blog (comma separated).

Did you like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed so you don’t miss a thing!

Here’s to your blogging success!

Michael Martine, Remarkablogger

Blog Marketing is what I blog about, Blog Consulting is what I do–How can I help you? Click here to learn more.

• What NOT to do (the “Add media” buttons are wrong)
• Where to get the embed code on a YouTube video
• How to customize the embedded movie player
• How to embed the movie the easy way, WITHOUT extra plugins

So enjoy (you may want to go full screen but the quality’s not as good as Viddler–since I used YouTube in the video, I wanted to use them for this post).

If you can’t see the video in your email or reader, it’s on YouTube: How to Add Video to a WordPress Post.

Also of Interest

Since I’ve written this post, many people have asked questions in the comments below and I’ve done my best to answer them, so please do check them out and leave a comment yourself if you have a question.

I have a few more posts on video blogging you may also find interesting if you found this one helpful:

• How to Wrap Text Around a Video
• Start Video Blogging in Five Easy Steps
• Should You Use a Video Service or Host Your Own?

• How to edit the post “slug”
• How to insert hyperlinks
• How to upload and insert pictures
• How to resize your pictures
• How to reveal the “kitchen sink” toolbar
• How to create subheadings in your posts
• How to paste in text from Word so that it looks nice
• How to split your posts so they’re continued after a link
• How to select categories for your post
• How to enter tags
• How to set the post publish date into the future
• How to enter information into the All-in-One SEO Pack area for better post search optimization

If you can’t see the video in your email or reader you can watch it on Viddler.

Squidoo is the brainchild of the well-known marketer Seth Godin. Squidoo is a multi-user site where, in a very user-friendly structured way, you create web pages on any topic you like. The web pages you created are called lenses. You don’t need any technical knowledge to create a Squidoo lens.

Why Create a Squidoo Lens?

If you already have a blog, why would you create a Squidoo Lens? One reason: backlinks. Backlinks are links back to your site from other sites. They are a measure of your site’s authority and popularity to other people, and to Google.

When you’re a new blogger, almost nobody is linking to you (except maybe others in your blog pack), so you can create links to your blog from Squidoo Lenses. These links are a portal for traffic, but they are also crawled by Google and added to its search index. You can put many links back to your blog in a Squidoo Lens, and you can create as many Squidoo Lenses as you like.

Legit Content or Gaming the System?

Squidoo has been in trouble in the past for being a haven for spam content, and it’s easy to abuse it in order to create a slew of backlinks to your blog. But think about what you’re doing, and what happens to people who try to game Google: your reputation may suffer, and Google is constantly improving in the fight against junk links and spam content. Remember: think Jedi blogger, not Sith. Think about what you want to achieve, not what you can get away with.

If you’re going to use a tool such as Squidoo as part of your blog marketing strategy, use it for the reason it has been created: content creation. Your strategy should be build a miniature empire of satellite content to the main “mothership” of your blog. That satellite content needs to be as carefully considered and useful as the content you create for your blog.

Even My Pitiful Lens Helps Me

I have a handful of sad little Squidoo Lenses, all of which are badly neglected and need updating. But the one I created for blog consulting has a Google PageRank of 3 and contains several followed links back to here. Do I get traffic from it? Almost none. But it is one more backlink with the anchor text I want, and that counts for something. Yes, I am nearly a complete failure at Squidoo, and I’m using that to teach you something valuable. That’s kinda cool, when you think about it.

I have tried to create legitimate content that isn’t just duplicative of Remarkablogger, but I know I could do better. Much better. Why haven’t I?

You Get Out What You Put In

Because I simply haven’t taken the time to bother with it. If I made this lens (and my others) into little powerhouses of great content, updated them often, and participated more fully in the Squidoo community, there is no doubt I would see even more benefits from my Squidoo Lenses.

In fact, it would be quite easy for you to go out and do a much better job at this than I have! Just make sure you have the time to devote to it–that’s always the crux: time. My priorities mean I spend my time on other things than my Squidoo lenses, like working for clients and putting together Gateway Blogging. But for the person who wants to take the time, creating great Squidoo Lenses will supply the important benefits I described above, plus something else.

One More Thing

When you create a Lens on Squidoo, you can set options for getting paid a share of any advertising revenues from clicks on ads in your Lens. Squidoo is basically paid for by Google AdSense. Squidoo is, in fact, a giant money-making AdSense machine for Google. Whether you will see any of that money or not depends on how many popular lenses you have and what their subject is.

While true you can make money from ads on Squidoo, the main benefit of Squidoo is not ad revenue, but to extend your online presence, drive traffic, and create backlinks.

Guest Blogger Week continues at Remarkablogger with Joel Williams of Blog Tech Guy

With the launch of WordPress 2.5 many things in the WordPress admin dashboard have changed. However some things remain the same, and one of those is how each part of a WordPress post affects what is displayed on your blog. For ease of use, I’ve used a screenshot from version 2.3.3 as this will be the one most familiar.

The WordPress Write Post Screen

Number 1 is number one for a reason. The title of you blog post can actually appear three times on a post page (see later screenshot). For this example, the title of our post is “Blog Post Headlines”:

• The post URL. If you have permalinks set to include the post name, then this title will appear in the URL of your post e.g. www.mywebsite.com/blog-post-headlines. Search engines like this as it tells them, and their users what the post it about.
• The title bar of your browser. At the very top of your internet browser window is the name of the page that you are visiting. Depending on how you have set this up this could say Blog Post Headlines by My Website Name
• The actual title of the blog post, either in H1 or H2 title tags. Title tags are what makes the text size larger than that of the text in the post, and search engines place more importance on them as it gives an indication of what the page is about.

Number 2, the Post Slug, shows you what your permalink URL will be, as mentioned above. It cleans up commas, quotes, apostrophes and other punctuation in your title. If you wanted to have a different URL to your title, you can actually change it here, but usually it’s nice to be consistent.

Number 3 is the text of your post. Whilst I won’t get into the details of search engine optimization here, your post should contain your keywords in a natural way, be on a specific topic, have associated images with descriptions relevant to your post, and most of all be unique, interesting content for your readers!

Number 4 and Number 5 are a way of organizing your posts can can also act as keywords for your post, so it’s best to make them relevant to your post to again help people find it. I like to think of Categories as broad definitions, for examples, Dogs, or Cars, with Tags being more specific, such as Irish Wolfhound, or Toyota Camry. This organization is up to you, but think about your post and what important areas you are talking about.

The image below shows where each of these actions turn up on your blog page. You will see that the tags (Number 4) are not visible on my theme. they appear as my meta keywords for search engines. Number 3 appears below my categories.

There are many things you can do to improve how your post reads to the reader and also how it appears in search engines. Enjoy your blogging!

Joel Williams runs Blog Tech Guy, a blog technical support website, reclaiming your time to concentrate on writing and promoting you blog.

Guest Blogger Week continues on Remarkablogger, with Naomi Duford of IttyBiz

Recently, I spent an incredible sum of money on the PlayStation game Rock Band. While this new addition to my living room has probably caused both my business and my blog to suffer — like Twitter, Rock Band shares many traits with crack — it has also taught me a few things about my business blog.

Take the Damn Tutorials

In Rock Band, in blogging, in business, and in pretty much every other facet of life, there are handy and free tutorials available to help you get started. Don’t be a hero and say you’ll figure it out on your own. You won’t. OK, maybe you will, but you’ll take about five years longer than you need to. Subscribe to Remarkablogger, Problogger , Copyblogger, Skelliewag, IttyBiz, and follow their — OK, our — advice. Honestly, we know what we’re talking about. We wouldn’t lie.

The System Works for a Reason

Rock Band is incredibly simple. All you have to do is play the notes it tells you to play, when it tells you to play them. Not exactly rocket science. The same is true for business blogging. There is a system. Social media activity, interacting with your readers, offering valuable advice, being consistent — these are all the things that turn a boo into a cheer. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. The wheel is just fine the way it is.

Don’t Pay Too Much Attention to the People Around You

Because we don’t live in Rock Band Communist Utopia, some band members are better than others. My husband is a mean guitarist and vocalist, but neither one of us could drum our way out of a wet paper bag. If you base your guitar strumming on my drumming, you’ll be booed off stage before you can say ‘Blitzkrieg Bop.’

In blogging, in business, and especially when you combine the two, your esteemed colleagues will lead you off a cliff if you give them a chance. Don’t give them a chance. If you’re going to start doing what the guy at the blog next door is doing, make sure he has a clue. How many subscribers does he have? What’s his comment section like? Is he doing better or worse than you are? Focus on what you’re doing, and ignore the rest of the noise.

Play What You Know

There was a time, many years ago, when I sat watching one scene in Wayne’s World, rewinding my VCR over and over for hours, just to memorize the lyrics and intonation of the song ‘Ballroom Blitz’. (Please don’t ask. It involved a guy I was trying to impress. I don’t want to talk about it.) Anyway, because of this, I learned to sing the song really, really well. It’s the only song on Earth that I can sing, but I can sing it.

Because it’s the only song I can sing, it’s the only song I do sing.

If you’re not funny, don’t try to be funny. If you’re not poignant, don’t try to be poignant. If you’re not an expert, don’t try to be an expert. People will respect you much more for doing your thing and doing it well than for trying to be something you’re not just because it’s trendy, or popular, or in-demand, or a potential money maker. If you don’t know shit about productivity, please God, don’t write about productivity. Write about plumbing or knitting or deep sea diving instead.

Start On A Small Stage

In any endeavor, you will always fail in the beginning. Always. You will fail brilliantly and boringly. You will fail in ways that make a great story later and in ways that you’ll never want to think of again. This is a guarantee.

However, the effects of your failure are mitigated by the size of your audience. If you start small and allow yourself to grow naturally, you’ll fail in front of a much smaller group of people.

Always Remember Who Has the Power to Boo

The crowd is your boss. That’s all there is to it. If you do not give the people what they want, they will leave. This doesn’t make you a bad person or even a bad blogger, but it does mean you’ll have a blog with no readers and a business with no, well, business.

When I started blogging, I gave a lot of marketing tips. While those were the posts that got the links, they didn’t get a lot of reader participation and they certainly didn’t get me fan mail. Then I did a piece that was really embarrassing and made me look like a total idiot. People loved it. I got comments and emails and even a couple of presents in the mail. (I’ve since removed my address from my website.) People were throwing their virtual panties onto my stage.

It changed the way I blog, and it should change the way you blog, too. Not that you should tell hilariously embarrassing personal stories involving emergency room visits and drinking wine out of a bag — there’s a limited market for that. But listen to what your fans want, and then give it to them.

Playing Guitar on Rock Band Does Not Make You a Guitar Player

It’s pretty easy to blog, and it’s pretty easy to play Rock Band. Blogging about the business you’re in — whatever business it happens to be — is the Rock Band guitar version of the music industry. Nice, but pretty far removed from reality. You become an expert by doing, not by blogging about doing.

Any moron can hook themselves up with a domain name and start shooting their mouth off. They might even find some poor suckers to read what they write, but that doesn’t make them gurus. You are what you do, not what you blog about.

It Gets Harder As You Go Along

If you’ve read the tutorials, you’ll know what to do. You’ll respond to each commentator. You’ll send personalized emails. You’ll participate in group writing projects and network on Twitter and maintain an active profile on StumbleUpon and Digg and God knows what else. You will be The Perfect Blogger.

It is very easy to master the beginner’s level of anything. But as you get better, it gets harder, sometimes faster than you’re prepared for. The Digg requests and the review-my-ebook requests and the sheer volume of comments will become overwhelming. You will start to forget what you’ve committed to whom. You will find yourself going to bed later and later because the things that you used to get done in a couple of hours are taking you until two in the morning.

When that happens, you have to rethink your strategy. It’s scary and a pain in the ass and it hurts to let some things go. Get over it. Realize it for what it is — a sign of growth — and rock on into the future.

Naomi Dunford runs IttyBiz, a blog and marketing company for very small businesses. Very, very small businesses. The kind of businesses that are so small they number their pets among their employees. Click here to subscribe to her blog. Remarkablogger does, and you obviously read that.