If your car needed repair work, would you go to a garage that offers free esti­mates? You likely would. Today, most garages offer them.

Not only has it become a cus­tom­ary prac­tice, but also every­one expects a free esti­mate from mechanics.

How­ever, here’s an inter­est­ing sce­nario. Let’s say your car broke down at the worst pos­si­ble time, and you are in a ter­ri­ble hurry. (If you’re like most peo­ple these days, you are.) Plus, you specif­i­cally wanted a free estimate.

If you had to choose a garage quickly, which garage would you choose? Would you go to the one you only think that offers free esti­mates? Or would you go to the one you know for sure that does? Espe­cially if you don’t have much time?

As sim­ple as it may sound, by com­mu­ni­cat­ing some­thing that’s usu­ally taken for granted by your tar­get mar­ket, you will be cho­sen more often. Rather than claim­ing supe­ri­or­ity, like “we’re #1,” you’re imply­ing it by demon­strat­ing what makes you superior.

A men­tor once told me, “Impli­ca­tion is more pow­er­ful than spec­i­fi­ca­tion.” In mar­ket­ing, it means that you should imply your supe­ri­or­ity rather than claim it outright.

If you claim supe­ri­or­ity, your claim appears self-​​serving and what­ever you do say is sus­pect at best. But if you imply supe­ri­or­ity, your claim, although not directly stated, is accepted as more cred­i­ble, gen­uine, and, para­dox­i­cally, concrete.

Peo­ple will uncon­sciously assume that you are supe­rior. You are com­mu­ni­cat­ing your supe­ri­or­ity, not in some mar­ket­ing piece you wrote or paid for, but in that most elu­sive yet vital of places in all of marketing…

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Last year, a bunch of copy­writ­ers who also blog — like yours truly — shot the breeze on the Nuts and Blog­bolts talk radio show.

It was an inter­est­ing and at times spir­ited discussion.

After some talk about con­tent and copy (or should I say, writ­ing con­tent ver­sus writ­ing copy), the show’s host, Mike San­sone, asked each pan­elist if we would indi­vid­u­ally respond on our blogs to this question:

“Writ­ing for the vis­i­tor is more impor­tant than writ­ing for the search engines. Can both be met with­out sac­ri­fic­ing quality?”

Ryan Healy posted his answer on the sub­ject. Good answer. I agree with him, because he makes some great points. But I also dis­agree as I think there are ways around it.

So I guess my answer is both “yes” and “no.” Here’s why.

First off, I’m not a search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO) expert by any stretch. How­ever, I do know enough about SEO to know that it’s pri­mar­ily based on three major factors:

Code, links, and content.

Let’s take a look at each one…

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“Do not mea­sure your life by your goals but what you are actu­ally doing to achieve them.“
– Peter Drucker

“The ulti­mate goal of life is death — the expe­ri­ence of life is where the value is, not the results we achieve.“
– Anony­mous

When peo­ple refer to pro­duc­tive­ness, they usu­ally refer to “busy-​​ness.” Pos­i­tive pro­duc­tiv­ity, on the other hand, is the result of doing what’s impor­tant and will hinge greatly on how well you adhere to this process of align­ment. Align­ment can also help you to dis­cover not only what you need to do but also pro­vide you with short­cuts as well.

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“Strong lives are moti­vated by dynamic pur­poses.“
– Ken­neth Hildebrand

While sta­tis­tics prove that 90% of heart attacks hap­pen on Mon­day morn­ings, it goes to show that moti­va­tion doesn’t come from work. In real­ity, most peo­ple find them­selves work­ing in jobs they hate.

Some wake up in the morn­ing feel­ing lethar­gic and hit the snooze but­ton one too many times. Some work only “for the week­end” and take more time to pre­pare their vaca­tions than they do their own lives. And some who become “worka­holics” end up work­ing them­selves either out of a job or into a grave. In short, get­ting moti­vated by one’s work is impos­si­ble. In fact, get­ting moti­vated by any­thing out­side of one­self is impossible.

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“Per­fect self-​​expression will never be labor; but of such absorb­ing inter­est that it will seem almost like play.“
– Flo­rence Scovel Shinn

In Suc­ceed­ing Through Inner Strength, Dr. Nathaniel Bran­den says that peo­ple uncon­sciously lower their self-​​esteem through their goals.

They usu­ally start by writ­ing down some neb­u­lous wish and may start work­ing on it with the best of inten­tions. They may even know exactly what they want and work really hard in order to get it. How­ever and more often than not, they quit and do so some­times just as fast as they have writ­ten it down.

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“You do not pay the price of suc­cess, you enjoy the price of suc­cess.“
– Zig Ziglar

Again, the inner you is your con­science while your con­nec­tion to it is your con­scious­ness. While you can act in accor­dance with or in oppo­si­tion to your con­science, you can’t betray your con­science for it is the wis­dom of the high­est that’s within. There­fore, if your goals ignore your con­science, they will uncon­sciously bring unnec­es­sary tur­moil in your life. But if your goals fol­low your con­science, you are then con­sciously purposeful.

If you’re like most peo­ple, you have cer­tain needs and aspi­ra­tions at this moment. You prob­a­bly want to reach higher goals, get pro­moted, make more money, spend more time with your fam­ily, find a bet­ter job, lose 10 pounds or so, take that vaca­tion in the Caribbean, start a busi­ness, etc. In other words, you want to improve your qual­ity of life right now and not at some point in the future.

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“The secret of suc­cess is con­stancy of pur­pose.“
–Anony­mous

I agree that, if one wants to achieve more, the most impor­tant tool for doing so in today’s world is time man­age­ment. The chal­lenge in deal­ing with an inces­santly increas­ing demand on this scarcer com­mod­ity that we call time is preva­lent in our soci­ety. Peo­ple are busier than ever before and seem to never have enough time to do what they really want.

How­ever, if you study truly suc­cess­ful men and women, you will rec­og­nize that they always seem to have lots of time. They live in the moment, are happy and love what they do, and are intrin­si­cally very pro­duc­tive. More­over, they have intense focused con­cen­tra­tion on the task at hand and seem to man­age their time almost instinc­tively. And they do so with pas­sion, zest and fervor.

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