Posts tagged blogging best practices
The evolution of a blogger
Feb 8th
By Srinivas Rao, Contributing {grow} Columnist
As I’ve observed bloggers from all walks of life, writing about every subject imaginable, and as I’ve taken the journey myself, I’ve found that there is an evolution that takes place. In each phase of the evolution we develop essential skills, but without the courage to stay the course and go through all the phases of the evolution, we’re unlikely to unleash the creative genius within all of us. While it’s tempting to see ourselves as marketers, what we’re really doing is creating art. Through our digital footprints we’re attempting to create our personal masterpieces and leave a mark on humanity.
The Novice
As a novice you look to experts, mentors, and those who have come before you for advice. You follow that advice, almost to the letter and it actually works. You also bring to your work a naiveté and a much needed fresh perspective that comes with a lack of experience.
The Mechanic
As a mechanic you’ve mastered the basics. You can do things with a certain precision and you’re sold on the notion that repetition is the mother of skill. So, rinse, wash and repeat is the formula you follow. And this formula works to a certain degree, until you realize that being a mechanic isn’t particularly unique and you’re just part of the echo chamber. The response to your work is either lukewarm or positive. It’s not long before the formula that allowed you to make the transition from novice to mechanic stops working and you’re forced to evolve into the next phase.
The Artist
As an artist you start to find a voice. You stop looking to the mentors, experts and people who came before you. You realize that to be seen as an artist you must become one of those people. You realize that following formulas and prescriptions designed to create a similar result for every person who uses them is a recipe for mediocrity. The linear process which you have followed to the letter falls apart and you finally come to terms with the fact that creativity is not a linear process. You take bigger risks with your content and the response is polarizing. People either love you or they hate you.
The Entrepreneur
The entrepreneurial evolution takes place when you realize that simply being an artist isn’t going to pay the bills or turn your blog into a business. Everything that came before was necessary to get to this point, and now you embrace experimentation because it’s at the core of growth. You detach from outcomes, focus on process and let the chips fall where they may. You find it inside yourself to watch everything fall apart, pick up the pieces and start all over again, now as, part novice, part-mechanic, part-artist, all of which combined turn you into an entrepreneur.
So, now I have a question for you? Which one are you and what are you going to do to make it to the next phase in your evolution?
Srinivas Rao writes about the things you should have learned in school, but never did and his the host-co founder of BlogcastFM. You can follow him on twitter @skooloflife
Did this blog make a difference?
Jan 1st
At this time each year I reflect on what has happened on {grow}. After 274 posts, did this blog and its community make a difference? Did it move ahead?
Here are some the aspects of {grow} that I hope had the biggest impact this year. You can be the judge if it made a difference in your life, your outlook, and your business.
Innovations
I pushed the blog in four new directions in an effort to create diverse, compelling and entertaining content.
1) Paid contributing columnists. I put my money where my mouth is and took a stand by ending this practice of bloggers building their businesses on the backs of others by expecting free content. I’m sure you’ll agree Neicole Crepeau, Stanford Smith, Srivanos Rao, Robert Dempsey and Steve Goldner consistently knocked it out of the park with their superb content. Neicole’s post “Are We Killing Our Customers With Engagement” was one of the most-viewed post of the year!
2) {growtoons} On May 6, the first of the weekly social media cartoons was introduced with Joey Strawn‘s Desperate Measures. A few months later, Kacy Maxwell joined the team. This innovation adds an element of fun and unique social media commentary. After all, how else could you poke fun at Chris Brogan’s sycophantic fans and get away with it?
3) New perspectives. I’m passionate about showcasing fresh, deserving voices on {grow}. I featured 40 different guest contributors this year, including some that I flat-out disagreed with! Probably my favorite contribution was Jon Buscall’s wonderful case study, How 20 High School Students Ignited a Social Media Success. Celebrating others is the most rewarding part of blogging.
4) Video. In 2011 I had twice as many video blogs as all previous years combined. It’s still not my preferred medium but it gave me the opportunity to shine the light on some incredible people I met throughout the year, including Helen Brown, who provided an interesting view of The Google Filter Bubble.
Darkness on the Edge of Town
In many ways, 2011 was a very disturbing year. I unwittingly hosted a ghost post scandal. My {grow} friends Steven Parker and Imad Naffa died. SEO tricksters continued to push past digital marketing ethical boundaries. Social media privacy problems made me wonder where all this is heading. A friend had her career destroyed by social media. And I am still struggling with the suicide death of my friend Trey Pennington. All of this was getting me down and it was coming through in the tone of the blog. And then something amazing happened. Hope showed up in a most unexpected place!
Breakthrough content
As an educator, I try to use this forum to get people to think about social media and its context in new ways. Ten posts that turned the thinking around included:
The World’s Best Company Blogs- The World’s Best Non-Profit Blogs
- Why the Economics of Blogging are Broken
- Turning PowerPoint slides into Social Media Gold
- How Social Media is Transforming Government
- Finding the Balance Between Personal and Professional on Twitter
- Marketing, Journalism and Truth as Competitive Advantage
- The Business Case for Facebook, In One Sentence
- A Process to Connect Social Media, Content Marketing and Sales
- Why Klout Matters. A Lot.
Five Big Favorites
As I scanned through the year’s work here on {grow}, I came across a few special posts that made me smile and think, “Yes, that was a good one.” This year, I received nearly 10,000 comments on {grow} and many of them were generated by these five favorite posts:
Why the Social Media Elite Are Ignoring Us? — It started out as a simple question but 2,000 tweets and more than 200 comments later it stands out as a blog post that helped put social media success in a rational context.
The Making of a Social Media Slut — Sometimes blog posts come from the most unexpected sources. I had lunch with a friend who was looking for a job and in a moment of weakness suggested she should watch her Klout score. In less than 15 minutes I had written a post and ignited a debate!
For Google, the Party is Over Before It Starts — I went against the grain and predicted that Google+ would not be the Facebook killer all the social media geeks predicted. This is the only blog post I have written that received more comments than tweets. Earlier in the year I also went against convention by stating that Quora (and the Quor-gasm!) was not the salvation everybody was saying it was and that QR Codes are doomed. Time will tell … but I still think I’m right in all three cases!
How Blogging Changed a Life — This was a difficult post. I like it because it represents the biggest personal risk of the year. Through my posts and speeches I challenge others to push themselves. In this one, I am taking my own medicine.
On Twitter No One Can Hear You Scream – This is my favorite post of 2011 because it combined all five elements of a perfect blog post: snappy headline, entertaining content, original thinking, crisp writing, and a personal perspective. Plus I thought the illustration was funny!
So there you have it. A retrospective of 2011. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations and thank you … you are a true {grow} fan!!
As always, I would cherish your thoughts and observations on this community and how I can help push it forward in 2012. Thank you!
Three steps to add bling to your blog
Dec 18th
If you think your blog could use a little more punch, listen up! Here are three ideas that anybody can use to make your blog posts sing with some editing bling! Let’s get phat.
Go non-linear. In school and in business, we’re conditioned to write in a linear way. We start at the beginning, discuss the middle, and conclude with the end. To grab your readers and improve your blog immediately, start with the end. That’s right. Tell your readers the conclusion FIRST. The blog-reading public is a busy and unforgiving lot. If you don’t grab them in the first sentence you’re going to lose them. So tell them exactly why they are reading your blog post. Deliver the goods.
Edit ruthlessly. And I don’t mean abandoning your best friend Ruth. I mean cut extraneous writing. There is no good writing, only good re-writing. Go back through your post and delete everything that is not essential to moving your point along. I know that can be difficult, especially if you’re proud of what you wrote, but get tough and do it. Your readers will thank you! I would say most of my posts end up being 20 percent shorter than when they started!
Bring some heat. Dig deep and figure out how to deliver an idea to your readers in a fresh and personal way. The heart of originality is bringing YOUR experience and personality to your writing. Don’t settle for ordinary – go the extra step and add some of your own personal flair to the topic. Here are examples of typical headlines you might see on the blogosphere and a personalized version that would demonstrate some creative bling:
Boring:
A strategy to build a Twitter Community
Blingified:
Bringing Down the Twitter Snobs
Boring:
SEO for Bloggers
Blingified:
Boring:
Building Social Media Relationships
Blingified
Social Media and My Big Conversation Fail
See? Isn’t bling more interesting? Now go forth and make your blogs sing!
If you added a fourth editing tip to this post, what would it be?
Do you want a blog community or do you just want nicey-nicey?
Nov 8th
When I immersed myself in the social media world three years ago, one of the most remarkable things I noted was how freaking boring it was.
There was an almost total lack of any meaningful debate or community. Sure, everyone SAID they wanted community … that was the big buzz word … but that is NOT what was happening!
For the most part, the top bloggers of that period hated any form of debate. If anybody dared to criticize an A-Lister, a fortress of sycophants would gather like blog-zombies to mindlessly defend against the most minor criticism or slight. Blog comment areas were simply a chronological list of people saying “Great post!”
It was remarkable to observe. Nobody would EVER DARE to write an unfavorable word against another blogger because it would end the reciprocity gravy train.
It’s still a lot like that today, or course. The social web runs on the hope of reciprocity — an economy of small favors. If you cross a powerful blogger, the hope for a favor in the form of a mention or a tweet dries up. So why risk it?
I thought this was a really destructive and dysfuntioncal dynamic. The blogosphere was one big love-in. How would we grow, how would we move forward, how would we innovate, unless we challenge and push each other in constructive ways?
And on top of it all, I found all this social media nicey-nicey happy-happy joy-joy breathtakenly dull.
So I wrote an article about it. In The Social Media Country Club I called out the A-Listers and said they were a bunch of back-slapping, glad-handers and I wanted to see some debate. That … I got.
When I pushed that “publish button” I figured I had just killed my chances of ever being a mainstream blogger. But just the opposite happened. Yes, I got a LOT of flak from the blog zombies, but I also had a groundswell of people saying “YES! It was about time somebody said this!”
And this, ladies and gentlemen, was the beginning of the {grow} community.
I took the risk and stepped out of the nicey-nicey box for a day to see what would happen and it was successful because it started a REAL debate and attracted a core group of folks who said “We’re in” and many of them have stuck around for good.
So now I need to ask you something. When was the last time you wrote a blog post or comment where you DISAGREED with somebody? I mean you’re human, right? I’m sure you disagree with a lot of stuff going on around these parts. Why aren’t you writing about that?
If you really want a blog community that TALKS to each other you’ve got to get out of nicey-nicey mode. We do not need another freaking blog about “Five Things I Like About Google Plus.” Disagree with something. Show some passion. Take a risk. Write a blog post that only you could write.
Here are five tips for disagreeing in a productive way:
1) Don’t write when you’re mad or emotional. You’ll probably regret it and you’ll lose credibilty if the rant does not have some substance. Also, don’t rant when you’re drunk.
2) Don’t take it personally. When you get pummelled, it’s a sign that you’re making people think and that you’re evoking a reaction. Get in a mindset of “If I take a risk, it is likely people will disagree. I should be prepared for dissent” … and when it shows up, just think “well, there it is.”
3) Be constructive. I have publicly and voceriferously disagreed with Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, Jay Baer, Mitch Joel, and Jason Falls, to name a few. In each of these cases, I have disagreed, but also managed to remain friends with these folks (Except Seth. Have never met him) because the disagreements have been constructive and professional. Don’t just rant with out some answers.
4) Take your licks. I’ve had more than 18,000 comments on {grow} and I have only deleted just three for being inappropriate (and two of them were just being too blatantly sales-y). Trust your community. Usually people are nice. And if they’re not, hang in there amd show ‘em what you’re made of.
5) Be patient. At one point last year I actually did a study and found that about one-third of the comments on {grow} disagreed with me, Honestly, this can get wearying! Sometimes I am in just in a mood for harmony. But I also know that every comment — both positive and negative — is a gift. This person devoted their precious time to YOU and cared enough to comment. That’s awesome, isn’t it?
Now I know if you are working for a big corporation there are some very practical, legal, and political reasons why you might not want to kick up some dust. But if you have a personal blog, what’s holding you back?
If this is out of your comfort zone … all the more reason to do it. At least try it. It will add some interest and diversity to your content … and it just might the kick-start your community needs!
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-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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