Did you know that you could gain expertise, and market yourself as an expert, in almost any industry, on almost any topic, after reading a single blog post?

WOW!

• Everything You Need To Know About Social Media Marketing …
• Everything You Need To Know About Web Design …
• Everything You Need To Know About On Page SEO …
• Everything You Need To Know About Performing A Craniotomy …
• Everything You Need To Know About Building & Launching A Rocket …

All easily and handily encompassed in one short read, in a single, solitary, blog post. And yes, I did stretch it to a ridiculous level with the final two!

Can you not see how ranting, raving and ridiculous this is?

Guess what? You CANNOT learn everything about anything, no matter the subject, by reading a single blog post.

Expertise … Prolonged Experience

Generally speaking I’m not one to share quotes, but when it comes to the expression and understanding of expertise, I found a handful that I think are quite fitting.

You must continue to gain expertise, but avoid thinking like an expert.
~ Denis Waitley

True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes.
~ Daniel Kahneman

I want to take the time to think through how I feel and why I feel. I don’t want to feign expertise on matters I know nothing about for the purpose of offering someone else my immediate reaction for their consumption.
~ Roxane Gay

Expertise, as stated succinctly above, requires prolonged experience. I don’t know about you, but even slogging through the longest of blog posts doesn’t really rank as prolonged experience. Though it might feel like it during the read.

Expertise Isn’t Immediate

We’re an immediate kind of world. We want responses fast. We want our businesses to be successful mere minutes after we’ve launched them. Our attention spans are short and we want everything right now.

We’ve latched on to the idea that everything should be easy and simple, but that’s just not so, no matter how many articles are published by hungry-eyed marketers looking for the next sale.

It’s sometimes easy for them, sure. Because they’ve already put in the time, effort, training, blood, sweat and tears.

Let me share something a lot of marketers and designers aren’t willing to admit openly. It’s not always easy for us, no matter our level of expertise, no matter our client base, no matter our seeming standard of excellence within our niche and peed community.

Some days you wake up and nothing you type comes out even remotely coherent. And that means it’s not an easy day for the expert content marketer.

Some days you sit at the computer, or at the ready with your pencil and sketchpad, and manage to create NOTHING. That makes for a rough day for the brand or web designer.

Every day brings new challenges and different circumstances. Each logo requires a different mindset. Each article requires research and rewrites.

My days are, more often than not, enjoyable, because I’m running my own business, doing what I love to do. But that doesn’t mean everything happens easily.

No Article Or Single Blog Post Can Deliver EVERYTHING

Much like the terms easy and simple, everything has become quite the buzz word, what I call a clickable calamity in the making.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Steer clear of clickable calamity blog posts promising easy and ‘everything.'” quote=”Steer clear of clickable calamity articles promising easy and ‘everything.'”]

When you tell someone something is going to be easy, they expect to walk away and easily accomplish the task or project. More often than not, though, the term is used only to elicit clicks, not to actually deliver on the promise.

It’s the same with the promise of everything you need in a single blog post. Especially when the subject matter is obviously complicated.

The everything article doesn’t deliver, yet it gets shared far and wide because people want to believe that easy is attainable.

Quick & Easy Is Rarely Quality

When it comes to training for a skill set necessary to your business, you’re going to have to a lot more than read a single blog post. You’re going to have to look beyond the quick fix to the long haul.

I get up every morning knowing I’ll learn at least one new thing that will help my skill set, and, thus, my business.

Learning is something I’m in for the long haul. Skills aren’t built in a one and done fashion. They’re honed, over time, with practice.

Every day I experience a new first. But the reason I gain expertise is because I don’t stop at first, I succeed through second, third, eighth, and even seventy-fifth attempts.

[clickToTweet tweet=”When it comes to knowledge, everything can’t be attained in an instant.” quote=”When it comes to knowledge, everything can’t be attained in an instant.”]

Everything in a thousand words? It just doesn’t exist!

What do you think?