Chris Hooley’s -ThinkBait-

“You know Tiger… you’re pretty good at Golf, but you suck at swimming. You need to practice swimming. You’re already good at golf anyways.”

-stupid person talking to Tiger Woods.

In SEO, business, and life in general, there are two ways of thinking about strengths versus weaknesses. One train of thought says to work on your weak points, the other is to work on the strengths. Both have valid logic behind them, but this chicken / egg controversy can have crippling effects on your plans if you aren’t careful.

I’m saying today, right here right now, that there is ONLY one way to look at this. Play to your strengths.

Let’s apply this to the world of SEO as an example.

On one hand we have a programmer; keen at logic and finding loopholes. You should be the person writing the bots, developing the dynamic content systems, analyzing the metrics, etc. You shouldn’t be writing that linkbait article or trying to force yourself to be to social butterfly online.

On the other hand; we have a writer or communicator. You should be the one creating social pieces, making buddies and networking, and using your programmer’s scripts to publish and push this content. You shouldn’t need to develop the scripts yourself.

Just think if famous football coach Bill Belicheck thought to manage his team by playing to his weaknesses. “I know Tom Brady can throw, but he sucks at tackling. He will be practicing at noseguard this week. Vince sucks at throwing, so he will be working with the quarterback coach.”

Ridonkulous.

So what’s different about business? The answer is nothing. You are wasting your time if you are trying to spend all day trying to make everybody understand all aspects of your business. That’s your job when you are the boss. Your management team might need to work on their weaknesses, since they are working with your future superstars, but don’t distract your superstars from shining in THEIR jobs by giving them the same distractions! FOCUS!

Point black you play to your strengths and hire for your weaknesses. Let the strongest people work their magic. Let positions build themselves out of your people’s talent. Don’t waste everybody’s time by distracting those who are strong in certain areas.