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1.6.10 - Are you settling for ‘good enough’ or pushing to be the best?

If you’re a good writer (and a good communicator), you should be able to talk the talk when it comes to blogging about a particular subject.

But can you walk the walk? For a blogger dealing with subjects that involve practical application (self help, any skills-based area (SEO, web design, wood-working, photography, fitness, self defense, etc), competence in your chosen field goes a long way in establishing your credibility.

For example, suppose we’re talking about a lady teaching self-defense techniques through her blog. Now short of actually seeing her in a live, unscripted situation, how would you judge her competence in the field that she is teaching? There are several ways to do this (and I’ll discuss 5 key steps of doing so in a bit), but the most obvious has to be to show evidence that she practices what she preaches and is successful because of it (social validation works even if the person selling you the idea is showing that it works for them).

This lady should accompany every blog post about a technique or pointer with a video demonstrating how that works. If this was someone doing SEO you’d ask him to show proof that he can actually rank websites highly using his ’suggested methods’, and if this was someone talking about digital photography you’d want to see snaps taken by them. Proof in action.

What if you don’t have a blog on something that uses practical application? In that case you must show your competence in knowing your field of interest and show your expertise in different ways.

Let flesh this out and look at a 5-step model for demonstrating competence in your chosen field – whether you’re a car blogger, a copywriter or a web designer, being “good enough” is NOT good enough. To truly succeed, you must aim to excel, and with that excellence comes natural credibility that oozes through your blogging.

1. Show Up Every Day
Are you still waiting for opportunities to come knocking at your door? There’s a saying: “All good things come to him who waits.” Unfortunately all that’s left by that time is leftovers from people who got there first and took initiative.

In blogging terms, don’t just do what is expected of you (by your readers, by the niche, by people who are giving you advice about blogging) but go one step further. Be there working on your blog every day, and instead of taking the option to slack off once or twice a week, show up with your “game” on.

Whether you’re blogging or promoting your blog, it’s not enough to just go through the motions – give it your best shot; give it 100% every time.

When 99% of your competition is going to slack off, just showing up and making the effort every day will make a world of difference to your blog’s success. And when it comes to credibility, nothing is better than establishing a habit in the lives of your readers. If you can get your readers to return, on their own, to your blog every day to read what you’ve written, your biggest job in terms of branding and reader loyalty is done. And how does this happen? When your readers see that you’re making a special effort to give them something interesting to read every day, and when what you’re blogging actually helps / fulfills a need for your readers.

2. Keep Improving
Sometimes (I’ve been guilty of this more than once) there’s a tendency in bloggers to take their foot off the gas when things start going well. For example, suppose that your blog hits the search engine rankings jackpot in October and thanks to AdSense and affiliate product sales, your blog’s revenues go from $1000/month to $5000/month. A 5x jump is nothing to laugh at, but it has the possible danger of allowing you to relax, kick back and enjoy the moment.

That is worst possible thing you can do at that point (short of shutting your blog down, that is) – remember that the results you see today from your blog are a direct consequence of your actions in the past few months. It’s the hard work you put in all those months leading up to this ‘boom’ that is showing you the profits. Similarly, what you do today will have an impact on how your blog performs in the next few months.

If you let up, your blog will go downhill again after the boom dies out, and it’ll be back to the grindstone again for you. On the other hand, if you DON’T stop to pat yourself on the back and instead keep working on improving your blog, the rewards will be even greater in a few months time.

3. Follow Through
It’s one thing to be able to practice what you preach – it’s quite another to deliver on the promises that you and your blog make. Following through doesn’t apply just to what you say to your readers on the blog (although it’s a big part of it) – your blog itself makes certain promises to your readers and it’s up to you to make sure that you follow through, with excellence, on those promises.

In a world where more and more consumers are finding that it’s easier to switch providers instead of push for product improvement, your ability to deliver on your promises will be your primary strategy in gaining an edge against your competition.

4. Accomplish More Than Expected
A constant theme throughout this article has been that as a blogger, you should be looking to do more than what is expected of you. Considering that you have a role in setting those expectations, it follows that you should be setting the minimum standard a bit high and then, every day, focus on doing better than that.

When you under-promise and over-deliver, your customers are impressed. But when you promise quality and THEN you over-deliver, you earn fans.

5. Inspire Others
Does your blogging provide inspiration to your readers? If you look at the top bloggers, a defining aspect of their time as bloggers has been their ability to inspire their readers directly because of their success in their specific field. Excellence combined with good communication skills (i.e. good blogging) is a guaranteed way to build your blog’s fan club. Most people look for external sources of inspiration when it comes to doing something in their lives – if you can be that source for your readers, not only will they be lifelong fans but they will also talk about your blog everywhere.

From “Good Enough” to “Great”
Ryan reminded me that this article was somewhat incomplete, so I’ve added suggestions on what to do when you want to push your game from being ‘good enough’ towards ‘being excellent’.

  1. Get your head in the game: If you’ve been mentally or emotionally detached from your work, it’s time to reengage. This often happens when we’re distracted by real-life stress that *shouldn’t* be there, or if we get involved in too many secondary activities and forget the core objectives of our blog(s).

    First, rededicate yourself to your job. Determine to give it an appropriate amount of time of your undivided attention. Second, figure out why you have been detached. Do you need new challenges? Are you in conflict with your boss or coworkers? Are you in a dead-end niche with no prospect of growth?

    Identify the source of the problem, and create a plan to resolve it. This will never happen unless you give your project your undivided attention.

  2. Redefine the standard: If you’re not performing at a consistently high level, reexamine your standards. Are you shooting too low? Do you cut corners? If so, hit your mental reset button, and outline more demanding expectations for yourself.
  3. Find three ways to improve: Nobody keeps improving without being intentional about it. Do a little research to find three things you can do to improve your blogging skills. Then, dedicate the time (and money, if necessary) to follow through on them.

What About You?
Do you settle for being good enough in your blogging, or do you push forward and give it your absolute best, every single time?

This article was originally written on 24 Sep 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Four tips for improving the conversation on your blog

Blogging is a one-to-many medium, but smart bloggers know who to turn it into an active group conversation between the readers and themselves. This requires the ability to communicate effectively – and it’s something that us bloggers can train ourselves to do better.

Here are four simple tips to help you improve your communication skills – this will not only help you in blogging but also in your networking efforts and life in general.

1. Simplify Your Message
Quite often what you say gets drowned out in how you say it. This happens because we tend to add extra, unnecessary information to our message.

Forget about impressing people with big words or complex sentences. They can make you look smart for a while but at the end of the day if you’re not getting the results (as a blogger this could be subscriptions, comments, product sales, etc), then all your efforts are meaningless.

Omit needless words. Keep things simple and focus on one thing at a time. Each blog post of yours has a particular purpose (that could be search engine traffic, comments, subscriptions, links, etc). Keep that purpose in mind and write accordingly.

Getting your message across means that you have to make what you’re saying absolutely clear to the other person. Don’t attach your feelings, second thoughts or justifications to your message – just be clear, be clear, be clear.

2. Talk To The Person
As bloggers we tend to have this annoying tendency to ramble on – it’s as if we like hearing ourselves talk (or reading our own words). The trouble with this approach is that when you write like this you have the wrong audience in mind. Who is your audience – your own ego or the guy sitting at home on a Thursday night looking for the banned Alicia Silverstone ad?

It is super-important to get the right picture in your mind about your intended audience BEFORE you start writing. Ask yourself who your audience is, what their needs are, how you can fulfill them and how much time you have to do this (time can be limited by a number of factors – attention span (can’t write too long a post), competition (be first with the news), etc.).

When blogging, remember that you’re talking to your audience and they have specific needs, motivations and preferences. If you don’t respect that, they won’t respect you.

3. Be Credible
People won’t believe you / trust what you say if they doubt your credibility.

There are two ways to convey credibility to your audience: First, show conviction – if you are confident and believe in what you say, it shows through your writing and attracts readers to you.

Second, back up what you say with your actions. If you are preaching a certain SEO technique or are giving weight loss tips, it makes a world of difference if your audience can see that you follow what you preach. For each blogger it will be a different story – celebrity bloggers can’t practice what they’re preaching (primarily because there’s not much preaching going on)- but in many cases you’ll have situations where you can boost your credibility and if you get the chance, make it count.

4. Seek a Response
As you blog, remember that the goal of all your blog posts is action. If you dump a bunch of information on people without leading them to the next step, you’re not doing your job. Every time you blog, give your audience something to feel (the need to improve their blogging skills), something to remember (how to be a better communicator) and something to do (the formula to become a better communicator).

If you’re successful in doing that, your blogging will improve and your audience will become more responsive to what you are asking them to do.

Takeaway
If you want to engage your readers and improve the conversation on your blog, you have to a) be clear, b) refocus your attention towards the audience and c) become credible.

Anyone can ask their readers for action (although it’s surprising how many people forget to do so) – but no one is going to listen to your subtle or obvious suggestions unless they have a reason to do so. And unless your audience understands and can relate to your message, they won’t feel inclined to respond.

This article was originally written on 21 Sep 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - How do you cope with blogger burn out?

This morning someone asked about coping with ‘Burn Out’. As bloggers we don’t just suffer from blogger burnout but also burnout from working on 20 different things at the same time and from matters other than blogging.

Everyone has a time when they ‘crash’ – the trick isn’t to avoid such instances but to know the best way to get back up. Look at ‘burnouts’ as your mind telling you that something is going wrong, that you’re offtrack. If you have a system to make course corrections, you’ll be able to get back to your feet with little downtime.

Here are 5 things to consider when you’re faced with a burnout – you are also welcome to provide your own suggestions in the comments in case you think I’ve missed out on something:

5 Steps To Coping With Burn Out

  1. Say No: Start saying no to people for 2 weeks – just say no to everything the first time. give yourself more time.
  2. Delegate: Delegate like you’re going on a long trip tomorrow and need people to ‘manage’ your business for you. Do it NOW – no, seriously, go and do it now and then come back.
  3. Vary Your Routine: I don’t have a single day that goes like the last one, and while it DOES have a negative impact on my income it’s also wonderful for keeping me sane. You can have somewhat the same times for waking up, sleeping and perhaps 2-3 hours of your most important work. But beyond that, keep things flexible.
  4. Deal With Outside Stress: Are you sure it’s work that’s burning you out? Other stuff can bring you down more than you think. Find out what you’re worried about during the day, what sticks at the back of your mind, and deal with it. Habits and Problems can weigh our morale down a lot and suck the energy out of you like a thousand leeches.
  5. Refocus Your Priorities: Sometimes I get burned out when I lose sight of what I want to do in the long run and get stuck in dead ends trying to meet short-term objectives. It helps to follow #1 and get my priorities back in order.

You shouldn’t be getting burned out if you do things right – it’s a sign that something is wrong, and usually it has to do with your mind shutting down because it isn’t being allowed to focus on what you want to do. It your mind’s subconscious way of saying that you’re messing up, and you need to fix things.

So what do you guys do to deal with (and to avoid) burn outs?

This article was originally written on 20 Sep 2007 for Performacncing.com.

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1.6.10 - Committing to your blog’s goals

Today I’d like to ask you two questions:

One – What is your most important goal for your blog?
Two – How committed are you to that goal?

The thing is, we make a lot of promises – but it’s the easiest thing in the world to say something, and the hardest to make it happen.

I think it’s important to establish what you want to achieve, and what you’re willing to do to achieve it, from the start. Sometimes your actions won’t match your words, so you may talk about wanting to do one thing (write linkbait) and end up doing the other (write about your cat). By taking out time to analyse your own words and actions, you can understand:

a) what you’re doing
b) why you’re doing it
c) whether your commitments are realistic or even desirable
d) what you really want to do

The first time you’ll do this, it should cause a major paradigm shift in your blogging focus. When I talked about character yesterday I mentioned that part of your blog’s character was staying true to your purpose and being in it for the long haul instead of short-term distractions.

It’s strong commitment to your blog’s purpose that helps you maintain that part of its personality, its character.

When it comes to commitment, there are really only four types of people:

  • Cop-outs – People who have no goals and do not commit.
  • Holdouts – People who don’t know if they can reach their goals, so they’re afraid to commit.
  • Dropouts – People who start towards a goal but quit when the going gets tough.
  • All-outs – People who set goals, commit to them, and pay the price to reach them.

At some point in my life I’ve been each of these four people – and I can tell you without a doubt that going all-out after something is freakin’ scary, tough to hold on to and when you start off, it seems like the price you have to pay is very heavy. However, once you’re on the other side, you don’t want to stop, and the sacrifices (in time, or money, or by giving up certain habits) you’ve made seem trivial in comparison to the rewards you’ve reaped.

It’s not the rewards the motivate you when you’re down though – it’s your internal commitment to yourself. Commitment means different things to different people:

  • To a blogger it could be writing another post after the first 25 haven’t received any comments.
  • To a copywriter it could be crafting another headline after you’ve written 40, just so you can make it as good as possible.
  • To a web designer it could be fixing that minor error in the site’s design that 99% of the people visiting it would miss even if they wanted to find it.
  • To a public speaker it could be pushing through self-doubt, nervousness and negative feedback in order to improve himself and become better.

In simple terms: right now, someone else who is just as smart as you is working hard to get their blog to the top. They’re committed to the vision they’ve set for their blog, and they’re doing whatever it takes to make it a reality.

The big question is, why aren’t you?

Find that one target for your blog that you are willing to work the most for, and then get busy doing it.

This article was originally written on 19 Sep 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Building a better blog? Work on your blog’s character

Your blog has its own personality, regardless of whether you actively cultivate it or allow it to develop haphazardly. Your readers are attracted to your blog for a reason, and its personality plays a pivotal role in attracting visitors and converting them into regular readers.

When your blog slowly converts passerbys into regular readers, a relationship of trust develops between your blog and them. It is this trust that forms the basis of how your blog deals with its readers and as such the blogger (you) must do what it takes to establish and maintain that trust.

This is where your blog’s character comes in.

Let’s discuss for a minute what I DON’T mean by character:

  • I’m not talking about being morally right (immoral content goes, as long as that’s what the blog is designed for).
  • I’m not talking about reporting only the facts (rumours work, as long as that’s what…you get the idea).
  • This has nothing to do with the blogger (well, maybe a bit) – quite often the blog takes on a completely different personality from the blogger, and if that sells, that’s fine too. You don’t HAVE to be your blog, and your blog doesn’t HAVE to be you.

    So what am I talking about?

    Character in a blog means:

    • Delivering on what you promise (integrity and reliability are cornerstones for building trust).
    • Doing what you do to the best of your ability (effort and quality will be your secret weapons for converting visitors).
    • Staying true to your purpose in face of adversity or success (don’t allow short-term results to distract you from long-term objectives).

    You may not have the most popular blog, or the best looking, or the most profitable. All those things are important, and we’ve talked about how to achieve all these things at Performancing. You don’t build a successful blog by copying the top bloggers on what they’re doing right now – you look at what they did at the start, what type of ‘foundational work’ they did to reach this level.

    Getting the foundations of your blog and removing the cracks in it should be your first and foremost responsibility – everything else flows from that.

    This article was originally written on 19 Sep 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Does your blog have charisma?

How can you have charisma? Be more concerned about making others feel good about themselves than you are making them feel good about you.
– Dan Reliand

Most people think of charisma as something mystical, almost undefinable. They think it’s a quality that comes at birth or not at all. But that’s not true. Charisma, plainly stated, is the ability to draw people to you. And like other character traits, it can be developed.

And as I’ve discussed earlier, your blog (and you) have a certain personality, a brand that can be nurtured, cultivated and molded into anything that you want it to be. Because the personality of a blogger can be one of the biggest ‘crowd-pullers’ for the blog, it’s important that you get it right.

To create a blog that attracts others, you need to integrate the following points into your blog’s philosophy:

1. Be Passionate and Positive
Who would you rather spend time with – someone who is grumpy, bitter and depressed, or someone that is cheerful, positive and passionate?

Blogs are the same – most people get turned off from whiners and are attracted to those who have a positive approach towards life (I wouldn’t say optimistic – there’s a difference in having self-belief and in distorting reality). Or, as they say, when you set yourself on fire (passion), people love to come and watch you burn.

Being positive is more than just avoiding the urge to criticise – it’s a conscious attempt to focus on how things can be made better instead of focusing on what’s wrong, it’s the drive to focus on the good rather than on the bad. You cannot be blind to a fault or a mistake, but you can choose what you spend your time on – pointing out what’s wrong or showing people how to fix it.

And just about every successful blogger I know speaks with passion and conviction – it’s not an add-on trait, this is perhaps the single-most important ingredient to blogging success (and success in life).

2. Expect the Best of People
How do you react when you first meet someone or as us bloggers are likely to do, meet them online? Do you judge them on their name, on their past, on their reputation? Or do you start off by thinking of the other person as a “10″, expect the best from them and give them all your attention?

How we interact with others directly influences what they think of us. If you treat them as perfect 10’s, they’ll remember you as someone who makes them feel good about themselves – and that’s what you need to get them to come back.

With blogging and bloggers, this works on two angles. First is your approach to networking – how you interact with fellow bloggers, readers, journalists, sales reps, etc. Second is through your blog and how you treat your readers – whether you appreciate them and encourage them to do better, or whether you talk down to them, insult their intelligence and expect them to fail.

If you appreciate others, encourage them, and help them reach their potential (both through your blog and through your networking efforts), they will love you for it.

3. Give People Hope
Are you all doom and gloom or are you confident that despite hardships, it’s within your hands to achieve results? Hope does not mean optimism, it’s the confidence in your own ability (and that of others) to do what is necessary to overcome obstacles – and it is this confidence (or lack of it) that will shine through and either inspire your readers or turn them away from you.

One theme you must have noticed here is that of confidence – the kind you have in yourself and your beliefs and the kind you show in others. To be honest, because we’re online and protected by relative anonymity and our blogs, this kind of self-confidence can be faked for some time, so fake it until you yourself believe it to be true.

Take a hard look at your blog and see whether it inspires hope or instills misery – unless the answer is firmly in the corner of ‘hope’, you’ve got work to do.

4. Share Yourself
Make yourself available to your readers – whether it is in terms of replying to comments, to email, sharing your IM details on your blog or just giving more of yourself in terms of personal experiences and resources. In a recent article titled “27 Tips for Building a Kick-Ass Blog”, I talked about how important it was to ‘give first’ and ask later. Sharing yourself is all about giving in terms of your personal time and attention.

In networking, this means helping out people you meet in solving their problems – trust me on this, if you just go out and help the next person who asks you, without asking or expecting anything in return, the rewards are tremendous. And you don’t just have to do this in person, you can do it on your blog as well. If you readers want something, give it to them, even if it means you having to spend extra time on your blog to make it happen.

Examples
A lot of the more ‘popular’ bloggers are well-known not only for being charismatic but also because they excel in their fields. However, to show you how sheer charisma can turn someone into a superstar, take the example of Edward Harrison.

Ed is a 60-something retired IBM employee, who started a blog about the football club Newcastle United in April 2007. Within a couple of weeks, his blog was gaining traction and in 2 months one could safely say that it was a roaring success. In the 5 months since the blog has been live, we’ve received over a hundred emails from readers and thousands of comments on the blog telling Ed that his blog is the first thing they check in the morning.

For me, that type of loyalty and appreciation cannot be bought, it has to be earned. Ed did not win over his readers by being the best writer, or the most knowledgeable, or the most insightful. Instead, he did it by doing 4 things right:

  • He’s a passionate Newcastle United fan, and it shows in the hard work he puts in the blog (anywhere between 5-8 posts per day) and in everything he writes. He’s also positive about his team – it shines through in his writing, is infectious and his readers love him for it.
  • He’s built a close rapport with his readers by trusting them to police themselves on the blog. Where you might see snarkiness run rampant on sports blogs, Ed’s blog is usually clean – and if there’s a troublemaker, it’s not Ed who has to speak up, it’s the readers. The community keeps the house clean.
  • He gives his readers hope by seeing the positives in his club and constantly thinking of how the team can go forward (as opposed to constantly criticising them). If you follow a sport, you’ll know the value of hope – and Ed gives that to his readers in spades.
  • Ed shares himself – responding to each email personally, taking the time to answer comments (which in my estimate takes him an hour a day) and has given his readers what they want by going the extra mile to fulfill reader requests for things like team stats and adding a forum, which takes up even more of his personal time.

When it comes to talking about something he loves, Ed is incredibly charismatic. He’s been my benchmark for a while now, and he’s the perfect example of how a blogger can become #1 in his niche by sharing his passion and enthusiasm for a subject with others.

Barriers to being Charismatic

  • Pride – Do you think you’re better than everyone else? How many arrogant, pompous, self-important bloggers do you know who are well-liked (and popular, for that matter)?
  • Insecurity – If you’re not comfortable with who you are and lack confidence in yourself, how can you make others feel comfortable and confident about you?
  • Moodiness – You may accept being nice one minute and snarky the other as perfectly acceptable behavior for yourself, but put it the other way around – how would you treat a person who behaved like this with you? Not with too much confidence and trust, I imagine.
  • Perfectionism – Like it or not, no one’s perfect. A perfectionist zeal can cause to focus on the small stuff – the 20% of the problems that aren’t important. You may love to nitpick (I’m a sucker for it) but resist it the first time.
  • Cynicism – Do you shoot down the ideas and opinions of others or do you encourage them to chase their dreams?

Self-Analysis
Self-analysis is a bitch – it makes you feel like hell and as a result most people resist the occasion to find flaws in themselves (you can’t be too self-critical though). I admit, I have all the traits I listed above, and for me it’s a conscious effort every day to not succumb to being cynical or snarky, and it’s quite tough at times to find the self-confidence to move forward with conviction.

However, I think that once you believe in something for long enough, it starts being your reality. In terms of habits, this is doubly true.
So take a good hard look at your blog and your own blogging habits. Chances are, you’re not doing everything as well as you thought you were. Chances are that you could use a gut-check and increase your blog’s charismatic appeal.

And to make it happen, there is just one thing you really need to remember:

When it comes to being charismatic, the bottom line is other-mindedness.

This article was originally written on 19 Sep 2007 from Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - 27 tips for building a kick-ass blog

writerIf you’ve been blogging for a while, you probably have certain blogging ‘habits’ and tips that you swear by. This article is a collection of such tips, designed to help you build a better blog.

Warning! You may have read some of these before – heck, all of these will be familiar to you. There’s a very good reason – they work extremely well for the bloggers who swear by them and while it’s hard to get bloggers to agree on what the important tip of them all is, they will agree that IF you take out XX days and implement each of these tips ONE day at a time, your blog will be be kicking ass in your niche, in your blogging community and in the search engine results by the end of it.

So let’s get started.

(more…)

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1.6.10 - Learn from your competition or beat your own path?

There are two popular views on ‘being successful’:

One says that you should look at the best in your industry and copy what they’re doing (and try to improve that while you’re at it). The theory goes that you can’t fail if you do what’s already working.

The second says that leaders are more successful and as a result you should strike out your own path and not copy others. Be an innovator, in other words.

Which one works? The reality is that both strategies, on their own, don’t work as well as when you combine the two.

Learning from your competition is smart because it shows you what you’re missing out on. Better yet, when you’re analysing your competition you invariably find things that they’re NOT doing well, which gives you more areas in which you can improve. Innovation comes from finding gaps in a niche and dominating them – however you don’t dominate in a vacuum; the lessons learned from observing your competition (especially how they’ve risen to the top) can be used by you for your own success.

Learning from others requires humility. Striking out your own path requires courage. Being #1 requires you to move fast and take risks.

And you need all 3 to be successful.

This article was originally written on 16 Sep 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - When do you monetize your blog?

A friend of mine asked me this morning if he should put ads on the blog he’s launching next week from the first day. There are two opposing ways of thinking about it – some people prefer to have their ads in from the first day while others tend to add them later on once they’ve built up their reader base.

Readers are usually tolerant of advertising as long as they don’t have a preconceived notion of a specific site being ad-free. We are bombarded by advertising so much in our lives that we understand and accept it even on a personal reading level when browsing online.

Showing ads from the first day helps you avoid false expectations that your readers might develop about an ad-free blog which could later prove to be a hurdle when you finally do show ads.

On the other hand, it may make sense to hold off on showing ads and instead use the ad space to highlight key areas of your blog to new readers. Later on when you’ve got a lot of traffic (especially search engine traffic) you can then consider showing AdSense or other advertising on your blog.

What do you do – show ads from day 1 or delay it until your blog has enough traffic?

This article was originally written on 14 Sep 2007 for Performancing.com.

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1.6.10 - Blogging for the future

Shane wrote about staying motivated and staying consistent in your early blogging days when the rewards may not be as immediate or … rewarding … as you’d like them to be.

It’s sound advice and it can be extended to blogging in general. Blogging for the most part is all about delayed gratification. When you see a successful blog that gets 100s of comments for each post, you see potential and an opportunity for you to be successful as well. What you don’t see is the sheer amount of hard work that went into building that success.

What you don’t see is the daily slogging and an insane amount of consistency behind the blog.

This works both ways. If you’re consistent and work hard all the time, your blog will eventually grow and become successful (but that success won’t show up now – it’ll show up 3-4 months later). On the other hand, if you have a successful blog and you let up your blogging efforts for a few weeks, the crash won’t happen then but in a few months as you’ll find your user base eroding and your blog set back by anywhere between 6 months to an year because you took your foot off the gas.

The next time you sit down to write on your blog, remember that you’re not blogging only for your readers today, you’re also blogging for your blog’s success several months down the line.

This article was originally written on 12 Sep 2007 for Performancing.com.

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