Part 2 of the Series Dot Mom Blogs™
There have been times (more than I care to count right now) when I have been in the audience at some professional conference and just felt the urge to channel Peggy Wood (the Mother Abbess from the Sound of Music), and break out in to the chorus of Climb Every Mountain. Motivational speakers shout from their lofty podiums "Follow your passion!" "If you think it, you will achieve it." Honesty, I swear to you on my children's heads, if I hear someone else tout that crap one more time, I'm going to jump off the highest mountain!
Which I guess brings me to the whole reasoning for this particular post in this particular series. I certainly can relate to those that I've worked with who say that they wish that they had realized sooner that being passionate about something doesn't automatically mean having the talent or aptitude to be successful at it. And, even having all three ingredients- passion, talent, and aptitude - still doesn't guarantee success. The surest way of finding your bliss, your life's work, or simply something you won't mind spending 8-10 hours doing each and every day, is to get to know yourself. And know yourself really, really well.
From my perspective, there's nothing easy about taking a long hard look at who you are. After several years of coaching folks on all rungs of the life ladder, I'm finding time and time again, that the ones who have never taken this "inventory" of themselves are the one's who wind up miserable in what they do and more often than not are unsuccessful in their ventures, including blogging. So stand back, evaluate yourself. Who are you, really. What are your likes, your dislikes? What makes your engine crank? What really fires you up? What things are close to your heart? What part of you are you willing to share?
So, here are my tips for getting to know yourself as a blogger.
- What's your perspective ? Your personal take on what ever you're writing about matters.
- Focus, Focus Focus- This would be my number 1-10 if I had a top ten list. Your readers are seeking you out for one reason. What's your Brand? What's your identity ? (Go back and read my article on BRAND YOU) What makes your blog different ? What makes you the "expert" on the topic ?
- Find your niche-what can you focus on that no one else is focusing attention on ? What new take do you have on an old focus ? Finding a niche is hot!
- Keep it simple stupid (KISS)- you're journaling, not writing a college thesis. Most of my articles come in at between a 7th and 9th grade level of reading. At first that really disturbed me. Then I realized, I'm writing to an audience, not for text-book publication. Write for your audience, don't write for the popular rockstar bloggers.
- Get personal. Build intimacy with your readers. You're building a relationship. You want them to come back time and again. Speak from your heart, your soul, the bottom of your toes. If content is King, then interaction is queen. Drop the fluff and get to the heart of the matter. This means from time to time you might have to strip your soul bear. But its worth it.
Next- The Technical Stuff
Have you entered the Brand YOU Giveaway ? If you haven't you can't win. And the pot gets sweeter every day! Click here to enter NOW !
Part One in the Series. Dot Mom Blogs™
Whether you're a newbie or an old pro, becoming successful as a blogger can be a daunting task. It's not going to happen over night. (No matter what you've been told or sold) But it can and will happen, if you have patience and a little insight into some basic marketing principles. No, its not just about making money here, but I'm going to let you in on some "secrets" that will help you along the route.
Chances are, nobody will ever care about your blog more than you do- except for , well maybe your parents or your spouse. This means you must take responsibility for managing it on your own. Don't even think about leaving that responsibility to anyone else. I'm not saying here that those around you aren't interested in helping you succeed. But their focus is primarily on themselves-their own projects, blogs, families and careers. Quite simply, your focus should remain squarely on you. Start thinking like the CEO, marketing manager, sales team, HR director, chief design engineer and talent coordinator of your own company. A company of one. YOU.
I talked about branding yourself in a guest post last week. We all know that product branding is designed to create an emotional response in consumers. Turns out, that many of those same strategies apply equally as well to branding yourself. In today's competitive environment, self branding is an essential element of establishing your reputation in the blogging world and distinguishing yourself from the pack. Simply put, its how you convey your core values, highlight your talents, and present your passions to your readers, peers and advertisers. You can be sure that each and every reader of your blog is forming an opinion about your brand, each and every page load. So, think very carefully about what it is you want them to be feeling and thinking about Brand YOU.
Next week, we'll talk about knowing yourself versus technical skills.
Below are the topics we'll cover in this mini-seminar. I hope you'll join me for the next few weeks and participate in the discussion.
- Knowing yourself = twice the importance of knowing the technical ins and outs.
- No such thing as work/life/blog balance, only trade-offs.
- Listen to your heart, then your gut.
- No pain, No gain.
- Get out of your own way
- Learn the truth about integrity
- You have to be good to be lucky.
What's your brand?
Today's post is guest written by Will from the blog Healthy Living for People and Planet Earth . The rabbit has nothing to say about Blogger. An explanation of what he is up to can be found here.
I visit many Blogger or BlogSpot blogs. A few of my favorite bloggers use Google's Blogger platform. In fact one of the most frequent visitors and the top commentator on my blog is Anna, who uses Blogger for My Only Photo . So, I have nothing at all against the people who use that platform for their blogging. If I really like a Blogger site or the person writing the posts, I will go to the trouble of commenting no matter what. But if I am visiting a Blogger site for the first time and the pop up comment box is used on that site, I am gone, never to return.
Some of the recent problems have been brought on by Google itself. As I wrote about in this article, in November of last year, Google, without notice, eliminated the ability for anyone to comment and link their name to their website. After the uproar caused by many articles like mine, Google added the open ID feature. This still did not quiet things down and as I wrote here , Google finally backtracked, allowing commentators to leave their name and URL with a comment.
If you use Blogger, you should use the changes Google made and make it as easy as possible for your visitors to leave comments. To help you make sure you have your Blogger site set up correctly, here are a few friendly suggestions that have been shown to increase the number of people regularly visiting and commenting on BlogSpot blogs.
First, don't use the pop-up comment box. This is the most important suggestion. If you start a new Blogger site, don't even think of using it, and if you do use it already, get rid of it today. Use the comment form that opens in its own new page. This form has the added helpful feature of a link to show the original post while you are commenting. Here is a link to the actual comment page being used on Anna's blog. I could make a list of reasons why you should not use the pop-up, but please just take my word on it, don't use it.
Once you have the proper comment page in place, make sure you show the two boxes needed by those of use without Google or Blogger ID's. This allows commentators to use real names and websites by entering their name and URL. You can see those two boxes in the image in this post or at the full size image linked above. Please note that I don't mean the Open ID box. That is there also, but the additional radio button drop-down labeled "Name/URL" with the two boxes for "name" and "URL" must also be included.
My last suggestion is that you absolutely do not use one of those captcha boxes on your blog comment form. I understand that spam comments are a real problem. I have been told that Google does not provide anything to stop spam comments. I find this hard to believe, but since I don't use Blogger, I will have to take the actual user's word for it. Those of us with self-hosted WordPress sites are spoiled by the Akismet plugin that comes with WordPress. I get hundreds, if not thousands of comment spam attempts every week. But with Akismet running, it is rare for even one to slip through. Because I have to help of Akismet, I don't need to moderate comments on my blog, but if you feel you must moderate in an effort to limit spam, do that rather than using a captcha box.
If Blogger does not have any way other than a captcha box to stop spam, then I make this my final suggestion.... Every single person you know that uses Blogger should be asked to contact Google and ask them to put a tool in place to stop comment spam. Point to Akismet for WordPress as a good example. If a month goes by with no change, contact them again. Google tried to take the easy way out last fall by eliminating the name and URL boxes. That backfired on them and they listened to the hue and cry of their users. Maybe an uproar asking for a better way to stop comment spam will also get their attention.
As a final, (and of course gentle), suggestion, you could always consider changing to a different blogging platform... like, maybe, WordPress.
-Will
I have an awful cold. Could be the flu, I ache, I'm running a fever and I'm generally miserable. I've blown my nose a kajillion times and I still have a head full. Looking at my raw, red, nose in the mirror, its really a sight! After yesterday's post, Loving What I Got , and all the e-mail I received. I'm thinking. Maybe, I'm not so happy with what I got.
My nose has always been an issue with me. Its little and Daddy used to say it was a "pug" nose. That conjures a picture in my mind that I've never been happy with. I can't find a picture of me in profile in any of our family albums. HMM, maybe I do need to think about this nose thing. Maybe I need to consider a nose job. Of course if I did, I would want to have facial surgery done by an expert. Maybe I could have this done while I'm on the West Coast, visiting my friends in San Diego. (Mythoughts run rampant with the idea)
Now finding a surgeon who specializes in nose surgery could be a task. Not knowing anything about the doc but what his website says could pose a bit of a problem. But they say that the west coast docs, do the best work. Though, I'm more prone to think the bigger clinics are in LA. I wonder if my insurance would cover that surgery. Probably not. So, the issue becomes, can I afford a nose job ? Probably not.
One more look at my face, red nose, road map bloodshot eyes, and general look of I feel like crap and I come back to earth. I look at the night stand by my bed and there on my hubby's side, is a beautiful picture of me in my 30's. In profile. And I have a nose! Quite a nice nose at that. (I'm modest if nothing). So, I got what I got, and I'm happy with it. If this darned code in my doze would just go away!
