(From Mark Evans Tech)
Last week, the Sysomos blog (which I write as part of my role as director of communications) became a member of AdAge’s Power 150, which features the leading marketing blogs. It’s great to be recognized for creating blog posts that you hope provide information, insight and value. At the same time, it’s also important to realize that blogging isn’t sexy or easy; it takes a lot of work and effort – and I’m not even talking about the “pro” bloggers at places such as TechCrunch, GigaOm or ReadWriteWeb that pump out multiple posts a day.
When I look at my own blogging activity (I also write a blog about Twitter called Twitterrati), here are my personal “rules”:
1. Be true to your interests and passions as opposed following the crowd or the hot news of the day. While it’s great to be in middle of the biggest story of the day, it’s also a noisy place with lots of competition for eyeballs. While playing in this sandbox is fine from time to time, a better place is sticking to topics that interest you.
2. Forget about trying to compete with the professional blogs such as TechCrunch, Mashable, etc. They’re online publishing machines with a mandate to generate lots of posts to attract readers and provide real estate for ads. These blogs have writers who post around the clock, which means they easily outgun the rest of us. While it used to be sort of easy to go head-to-head, those days are long gone, which explains why there are so few individual bloggers on the Techmeme Leaderboard.
3. Don’t force it. Sometimes, ideas for blogs just flow like water; sometimes, ideas are few and far between. If a blog post just isn’t happening, walk away from the keyboard. In fact, the best ideas for posts come when you’re doing something else other than being online. While Seth Godin or Chris Brogan would likely shiver at the thought, it’s actually okay not to write a blog post every single day.
4. Focus on quality, not quantity. This is related to points #2 and #3 but make sure whatever you do – whether it’s a 750-word opus or a 100 mini-post – offers some kind of value. For mental “burps”, use Twitter.
5. Don’t worry about the numbers. Sure, it’s great to have a lot of readers but “success” for most of us has more to do with who reads our posts as opposed to how many people read them. For most people, blogs can be a terrific vehicle to be part of the conversation, and show your insight and perspective. Unless you’re into blogging for the money, this is as important as having lots of readers.
6. Have fun. For most of us, blogging isn’t a job; it’s a passion. Enjoy the ability to write in a public forum with few barriers to entry. It wasn’t that long ago that writing and being able to reach a large audience was limited to journalists. Today, anyone can do it.
What are your secrets to happy blogging?
Read more: Mark Evans Tech: A Canadian Take on the Web and Technology
