BlogKing September 3rd, 2007
There has been a lot of posts written about the optimal way to blog. One of the most important tips in my opinion is establishing your self in the greater blogosphere that already exists around your topic.
Kristie T at the Home Business Blog writes that her biggest first-year mistake was “not reaching out to other bloggers soon enough.” She adds that she has worked on this, and “Now I have a sense of community with other bloggers.” I would add that it might feel really weird at first to leave comments and write an email or two. But most bloggers are really cool and happy to help and almost always write back! (Guy Kawasaki probably won’t write back. Unless you’re Arianna Huffington.)
So it’s not all about your own blog. Get out there and contribute to the community. You might get some good link love in return (its good to make the Google algorithm happy). [When available use a trackback for instant reciprocal link goodness.]
The second most important tip is write often.[I am working on that one myself]
Maybe you don’t feel inspired. Liz Strauss has 10 Reasons to Write and Publish Every Day.
We write to record our thoughts . . . and by recording them we think them through, rearrange, and re-organize them. We make our ideas clearer. We make our thinking stronger and more easily understood. We carve a path that a reader, a listener, another person can follow from our minds to their minds, from our hearts to their hearts. Writing is a connection waiting to happen.
That is great motivation right there. Writing will clear you head and bring better understanding. If you are writing a business blog isn’t that the value added; the hard won insights that distinguish you from the average practitioner. Sometime those insights come in the act of putting your thought into words for public consumption. So write and become wiser.
My favorite from her list is #3
Writing every day helps us develop a voice that is natural and consistent, strong and confident, and attuned to readers. Everything we write has an audience. Even when we write for ourselves, we go back to read, listening to what we wrote. We question. We consider. We critique our choices.
Have you any thoughts about developing your blogging voice? Trials, tribulations, false starts. You are not alone. Share your ideas here.