Blogging Expertise

I’m reading the transcript of Jeff Walker’s “Social Proof Call” and have found a few excellent points that I want to remember for my own blogging use. I’m posting them here because I think you’ll probably find them handy, too.

• Write more “case study” posts. I don’t do this anywhere near often enough, but these posts can be gold for both you and your readers. That’s because a good case study not only answers the question, “Is this for real?” but more importantly, helps the reader answer for himself, “That’s great, but is this something I could do?” Case studies help your readers visualize themselves using your solution.
• Make your readers feel less alone. Ask someone (anyone) what their biggest fears are and chances are “being alone” ranks right up there. By writing about your experience, or writing about your customers’ experiences, or sharing a common fear or concern or joy or question, you help your readers find a connection that they are craving.
• Back up your claims with proof. What kind of proof will vary by what business you’re in; it could be screenshots, or statistics, or quotes, or photos. The ideas is simply to give people a reason to believe what you’re telling them, beyond “because I said so.”
• Be yourself and be honest. It’s more important to get people to care about what you’re saying than to get them to agree. You’re never going to get everyone to agree, anyway. And honesty? Seems like a “duh” suggestion, but there’s always the temptation there to stretch the truth (to look better, to make more money, whatever your motivation is). In the long run, though, your mother was right. Honesty really is the best policy.
• Give your readers a forum to brag. First you give them the information they need to be successful, and then you set up a place for them to talk about how they’re succeeding based on that information. You can use anything from comments to a full blown forum to a membership site to make this happen. Your readers look good because they’re succeeding, and you look good because you helped them get there. It’s a win-win.
• Use anticipation to create demand. People generally have boring lives (I’m sure you’d find my life pretty boring!). Think like a serial novelist or 24 writer and give your readers something to look forward to! Anticipation builds excitement and interest.
• Get your readers invested in your blog by featuring their questions. There’s nothing like being “a contributer” to make someone read and tell their friends.

I hope you find this little summary useful. There were many other thought-provoking ideas–I just focused on the ones that are specifically relevant to blogging–so if you have the time, I highly recommend you read the whole transcript.

If you’ve established a goal of how often you want to publish new posts, chances are that you’ll eventually find yourself staring at the blank editor box, your muse strikingly absent. Sometimes that means you need to come up with a better routine or learn to work with your muse, but sometimes, you just need something to jump-start your mushy brain.

Here are three sources of inspiration that I’ve been using recently. Read more…?

Beyond goals about what you want to get out of blogging, it’s a good idea to set goals for what you’re going to put into your blog.

You can’t force readers to come, or to subscribe, or to buy your product, or to call you for an interview. Those are areas you can influence but ultimately, they’re out of your control.

What you can control, though, are the actions you take to create an online environment that increases the probability of success and influences your readers, potential and existing clients, and the media.

The big benefit your “blogging input goals” will provide is a structure for the consistent small actions that will build a solid base for long-term success. Blogging is like any other type of marketing: if you put serious effort into it only when you’re not getting results, but abandon it when you get busy, you’ll create a feast-or-famine situation, a roller coaster of unpredictable results.

Steady actions result in steady growth, and that’s the goal∧ steady doesn’t have to mean “plodding.” Everything is accelerated online. You can see results quickly and experience continued success by having a plan and following it.

So what kind of goals should you set? Consider things like:

• How many posts you will write each week
• What day(s) you will write them
• How many blogs you will read (more is not always better!)
• What other kinds of topical information you will consume (magazines, books, etc.) and how often
• How many comments you will leave on other blogs
• How much time you will spend per week on other kinds of promotion (be specific!)

You’ll probably develop a better idea of what these tasks will require when you read my book, but I encourage you to write down your initial goals.

Start on the conservative side; you can always increase later if you want, and it’s much better to consistently meet less-ambitious goals than to be overwhelmed and do nothing. Your goals need to be sustainable to make any difference.

My other advice for input goals: raise your goal only after a couple weeks of exceeding the goal you already have. It’s very common for new bloggers to get caught up in the excitement of blogging and be very prolific—the normal result of thinking about something regularly. But as blogging becomes more routine and other duties press in, it can be surprisingly difficult to maintain the initial pace.

Before you move on to something else, write down your starting goals. It will probably take less than five minutes, so do it now.