It’s far too easy in this social media bubble we live in to forget who we are blogging for sometimes.  It’s easy to look over and see how this blogger is blogging 5 times a week and (apparently) getting big traffic.  Or how this blogger is being more ‘controversial’ in her posts and that seems to be getting a reaction from her readers.

And here you sit with a blog that gets no comments and that averages 1 new post a week.  It’s FAR too easy to become jealous of other bloggers that you feel are more successful than you are.  That get more engagement, that seem to get more speaking gigs, etc etc etc.

But you always have to remember that you’re not writing for those bloggers, you are writing for your audience.  You don’t measure your success based on how many posts you write versus how many Jay does or if your blog gets anywhere close to as many comments as Gini’s does.

At the end of the day you need to define your blogging success by answering this question:  Am I creating content that’s valuable to my target audience, that’s helping me grow my business?  If you can answer ‘yes’ to that question, then what happens on my blog or anyone else’s blog is absolutely meaningless to your blog.

For example, look at the content that Becky and the gang at Small Biz Survival create:

More photos for your tourism promotions

Square changes the way Small does business

Shop local idea to get everyone playing

Getting your business found

Getting started with heritage tourism

Educate your customers without being taken advantage of

And those posts are just from this month.  Just from reading the titles of those posts you know exactly who Becky and the gang at Small Biz Survival are writing for.  And no, they don’t get a million comments a post.  But the comments they do get are from their exact target audience.  Plus, the content they are creating is helping to establish the blog as THE go-to source for information on how small businesses in small-town America can succeed.

Becky understands that she is writing for a very specific audience, and she creates content that’s laser-focused on what they need to succeed.

You should be doing the same thing.  It doesn’t matter what another blogger is doing on their blog, what matters is how are you serving your readers on your blog?

@mackcollier @evrenk – the newsletter gives me 10x more response than the blog on asks and requests. By volume not %.

— Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) March 12, 2013

A few days ago the news came out that Google will be pulling the plug on its beloved Google Reader service on July 1st.  Google Reader is a free service that many bloggers use to keep up with their favorite blogs.  I also use it to subscribe to numerous vanity searches as well as keyword phrases, etc.

My first thought was that man, this is going to suck, how will I find a decent alternative so I can read and stay up to date on my favorite blogs?

Then I quickly had my second thought:  What does Google Reader going away mean for me as a blogger and how will it impact my ability to reach my readers?  If FeedBurner is to be believed, about 2,000 people a day access this blog via Google Reader.  So when Reader shuts down, that suddenly means those 2,000 people won’t be reading my new posts anymore!  They’ll have to either switch to another reader, or they could come here and subscribe to the email version of this blog, or start checking the blog manually.  The bottom line is that I am going to lose some readers.  We all will.

Oh and BTW, if Google will pull the plug on Google Reader, that probably means FeedBurner is next.  What these two moves together mean is that suddenly bloggers have lost a LOT of control over how they distribute their content to their readers.

I cannot help but wonder if this is part of the reason why there seems to be a renewed interest among many top bloggers for encouraging readers to subscribe to their email newsletters.  Hell Chris Brogan’s recent site redesign all but puts the entire focus on encouraging email subscribers.

A big reason why I’ve always preferred blogs over other social media tools like Twitter and Facebook is that you have more control over the content you create.  But with tools like Google Reader and Feedburner, Google controls how people receive your content.  I think part of the reason for the move to email newsletters is that bloggers want to take back some of the control over how their content is delivered to their readers, and wants more a direct contact/feedback channel with them.  Something that RSS subscriptions have never offered.

What does Google Reader being discontinued mean for you as a blogger and a blog reader?  What other options will you investigate?  Feedly was a popular alternative offered last night at #Blogchat, have you used it?

I was just on Facebook and fell down a bit of a digital rabbit hole.  Someone had linked to a new blog post from a blogger I hadn’t read in years, so I checked out their blog.  I started looking at their blog roll, and noticed several blogs I hadn’t read in years.  I clicked on one, and noticed the most ‘recent’ post was from 2010.  I started backtracking, she had written a post every few months, one post was announcing that she was ‘back’ to blogging, and that blogging was a great way to build your reputation online, establish thought leadership, etc.  Then she didn’t blog again for several months, then again several months later, which was her last post.

Let’s be honest, if you are a blogger that wants to use your blog as a tool to build your influence/thought leadership, etc., you are going to be asked to give a lot more than you get.  That’s pretty much how you build a name for yourself, you continuously provide smart and helpful content, and over time, people start to notice.  Then in an ideal world, opportunities open up to you.  Maybe you get a job offer, or work offers, maybe a book deal, perhaps you are asked to speak at an event.

But it’s sometimes very easy to ask ‘what’s in it for me?’  It can be tough to stay motivated to spend 5 hours every week on your blog, if no one is commenting and no one is subscribing and you are getting no business from it.

I’ve known countless bloggers that have launched blogs as a tool to grow their business, or to promote themselves, and they toss in the towel after a few weeks because they didn’t see the immediate results they were looking for.

On the other hands, I’ve known many bloggers that toiled away year after year with little to no recognition, then suddenly in year 5 or 6, it all takes off and suddenly everyone notices them and loves them.

What’s the difference and why do some bloggers quit while others press on?  I think it comes back to motivation.  From what I have noticed, most of the truly successful bloggers are motivated by helping others be better at something.  When that’s your source of motivation, then you stop carrying that mental balance sheet of how much you are ‘giving’ your readers versus how much you are ‘getting’ back.  Or at least it doesn’t matter as much.

For the first two years that I ran #Blogchat, I made a grand total of $800 directly off the chat.  If I had launched #Blogchat because I wanted to make money off it, I would have likely killed it after a month or 2.  But my motivation in starting and continuing the chat has remained the same:  Helping other bloggers become better at what they do.  That’s it.  I see the chat as a way of ‘giving back’, because blogging has given me so much, I am happy to create a way to help other bloggers achieve some of the success I have.

What’s your motivation for blogging?

A few years ago I was at a conference, and I was doing a special session where attendees got 15 minutes to ‘Ask an expert’ about their blogging questions.  A girl came up to me, and told me about a problem she had with her blog at work.  She slumped as she told me the problem, and her body language screamed ‘I have no idea what to do!’

So she told me her problem and I said ‘Here’s what you should do:’, and she immediately perked up, sat up straight, and grabbed her pen.  I started telling her exactly what to do, and she started scribbling furiously.  I gave her the exact advice she needed, and after about 2 mins of furious writing, she announced ‘Ok…thanks!’, and got up and left.

As soon as she started writing, I made a mistake.  What I should have told her was ‘No, put the pen down, and listen to me.  Because you aren’t going to understand what I am telling you otherwise.’  This is the mistake that most people make when they attend conferences, they go, take copious notes, and come back to work on Monday with pages of hastily scribbled chicken-scratch that makes no sense to them because they don’t have the speaker there to interpret the mess for them.

The first social media conference I ever attended (and spoke at) was SXSW in 2008.  It was ah-mazing.  Actually, the conference itself was terrible.  The sessions were boring and I got almost no value from them.  But what made the trip so valuable for me was the conversations I had with other attendees, either in the hallways, or at dinners, parties, etc.  And not just the attendees, I got to speak with speakers as well.  All along the way, I was getting to talk to experts and peers about my exact problems.  I got exact advice on the issues I was dealing with, and I was able to share advice as well.

‘The magic happens in the hallways’.  That idea always stuck with me.  Attendees seem to get the most value from an event when they put down their pens, stop taking notes and actually listen to the speakers and their fellow attendees.  And the event creates more value when its less about lectures, and more about interactions among the speakers and the attendees, and especially the attendees themselves.  Then about it, if you have a blogging question, what solution works better for you, listening to me tell you how another company solved a similar problem, or having a group discussion about how we can solve your problem?

We took this into consideration when we designed the agenda for BlogHOT.  We wanted the focus to be on teaching you how to be a better blogger.  The agenda is set up so the majority of the time you will be in a session where you are interacting directly with the speaker, and other attendees.  That means you will be getting specific solutions to your blogging problems.  It also means you will be interacting directly with other people that have dealt with the exact same blogging issues that you have.  So you’ll be getting the exact solution to the problems you are facing today, but you’ll also get advice on how to avoid tomorrow’s problems as well.

The goal of BlogHOT isn’t to tell you how to be a better blogger, we are going to teach you how to be a better blogger.

What typically happens when you get back from most blogging or social media conferences?  You probably take all your notes, type them up, and distribute them to your team to discuss at the next marketing and/or social media meeting.  And then you remind everyone of the blogging issues that you went to the conference to get help with, and then ask them to refer to a particular paragraph of your notes that covers the solution to that problem.  Right?

The difference with BlogHOT is that when you return to your office after attending, you are going to show your team what you learned. You aren’t going to give them notes, you are going to teach them how to solve the problems that your team needed help with.  You are going to open up the blogging dashboard and show them how to write a more captivating headline.  You are going to go to Google Analytics and show them how to determine if the blog content is creating engagement and leads.

You are going to be the teacher, not the note-distributor.  That’s why your boss is going to thank you for asking to go to BlogHOT 😉

Now BlogHOT is not cheap, it’s a big investment.  But it’s just that, it’s an investment.  That investment is going to pay off because you are going to get the exact answers to your blogging questions, and the blogging efforts of your company will immediately improve as a result of you attending BlogHOT.  And as a bonus, if you register by Friday the 15th, you’ll get a $100 discount off the regular registration price.

Need help convincing your boss?  No problem, we’ve even created a Letter to Management, just download it, fill in the costs and your information, and send it on!

BlogHOT is March 25-27th in Los Angeles, I hope to see you there, if you’ll be attending please leave a comment so we can connect, and make sure to follow the #BlogHOT13 hashtag on Twitter to see who else is going plus keep up on the latest event news!

Last Sunday’s #Blogchat topic was whether bloggers should try to post consistently, or only when they have something ‘epic’ or ‘awesome’ to share.  I’ve made my thoughts known on this topic, I believe that we can’t create awesome content until we first create a lot of non-awesome content.  Blogging is like anything else, we get better with experience.

Throughout the course of the conversation, many people offered that you need to be creating epic/awesome content, or else what’s the point?  The message was:  If you can’t blog something epic, then don’t blog at all.

Then Marcus walked in and dropped this:

I’m late jumping in here, but all this EPIC talk is scaring the crap out of many bright minds that are intimidated to share. #blogchat

— Marcus Sheridan (@TheSalesLion) February 11, 2013

And there you go.  If you are someone that’s considering launching a blog (whether for yourself or your business) and all you are hearing is ‘If you can’t be awesome, then don’t blog’, what’s your reaction going to be?  You’re probably not going to blog because you don’t know how to be an awesome blogger!

The punchline?  The people that are telling you that you have to be awesome to be a blogger didn’t know how to be awesome when they started either!  In fact many of them are probably still struggling mightily to be awesome every single day and many of them are failing every single day.  Lord knows I fall into this camp far more often than I would like.

So let me clear the air right now:  If you are a new blogger, or you’re thinking about starting a new blog, do NOT focus on only creating ‘awesome’ content.  Focus on doing the best you can, and learning as you go.  If you do that, then the awesome will come.

And for those of you that think that’s BS, that I should NEVER tell anyone not to be awesome, STFU.  If you want to see other bloggers be awesome, then stop telling them to be awesome and show them how to be awesome.

We need fewer talkers, and more teachers.  And Marcus is right, we need to stop scaring away new bloggers by asking them to reach an impossibly high standard from Day One.

A standard that many of us experienced bloggers miss every single day.

When it comes to blogging (much like any form of social media) there really is no ‘silver bullet’, but these three plugins will instantly create a better experience for your readers.  Which is always a good thing.

1 – Comment Redirect.  Easily the best plugin I have ever added here.  What this plugin does is when someone leaves a comment for the first time here, it redirects them to a page of your choosing.  For me, it sends first-time commenters here to this page and thanks them for commenting!  You can read the comments for yourself to see what everyone thinks about the idea.

2 – WPTouch.  This is a plugin that I wish I had added at least a year ago.  It makes a mobile-friendly version of your blog!  From a useability standpoint it makes a night and day difference when viewed on a smartphone.  Here’s a recent review I did of the plugin with before and after screenshots.  Anyone viewing your blog on an iPhone will LOVE you for adding this!  Now there is a caveat that a few people said the plugin didn’t play nicely with their particular theme, so check the comments in that post for more information on that.

3 – Popular Posts.  This creates links to your most popular posts for the life of the blog, and parks them in a widget on your sidebar.  Several times, this one plugin has sent me a flood of traffic as a major site will pick up one of the posts from the sidebar under Popular Posts (look to the far right sidebar and you’ll see it).  It’s a great way to pull out some of those classic posts you wrote 2-3 years ago and have forgotten about.

So there’s three plugins that you can quickly add and immediately improve the experience on your blog for your readers, especially #1 and #2.

Which plugin are you using to create an amazing experience for your readers?  What would you add to this list?

If social media has done anything, it has highlighted the fact that we humans love to jump to conclusions.  And we love to latch onto assumptions that validate and agree with our own worldview.  The same thing with blogging, we cling to many ‘truths’ that are in reality, mostly bunk.  Here’s five of them:

1 – Comments are an indicator of how successful your blog is.  Kevin Hillstrom left a comment here earlier this week, so I want to pick on him for a minute.  Here’s how many comments his blog has received so far this year: 30 comments on 33 posts.  Less than 1 comment per post.  So his blog sucks, right?  Here’s the comment Kevin left:

“70% of my annual consulting revenue comes from my blog. I know this, because I ask every CEO who hires me how they found out about me. They tell me that they heard about me via word of mouth (usually from other blog followers), then they read my content for anywhere between 6 months and 3 years before deciding to hire me.

This trend has held constant for all six of the years I’ve done database marketing work for CEOs.

I used to be a VP at Nordstrom, so one can guess that I earn a reasonable living. Multiply that by 0.7, that’s the fraction the blog is responsible for. The blog works wonders for my business.”

Lesson:  Engagement can be a sign of successful content, but only if that engagement helps you reach your blogging goals.  Now some bloggers like Gini Dietrich claim they get many of their customers from people they connect with after they leave comments on their blog.  I can totally see that, but you shouldn’t assume that simply getting comments means your blog is successful.  More comments is only a sign of success if it is helping you reach your larger goals for your blog.

2 – If you build it, they will come (AKA, Great Content Gets Found).  Not complete bullshit, but it’s close.  Even if you are an amazing writer and create amazing content, that content still has to get found.  Now the ‘Content is King’ proponents will argue that great content always gets found.  And it usually does, what they won’t tell you is that it might take weeks, months or even years for this to happen.  We all have far more information coming at us than we can process.  Go to Twitter right now and you’ll see a steady stream of links being shared back and forth.  How is your amazing content going to stand out in that crowd?

Lesson:  You get out of blogging what you put into it.  If you want your content to be found, then you need to get off your blog and interact with people in their space. Now this isn’t an absolute, because you can always make the argument that blog content can be found via search.  But in general, you can greatly increase the chance of your blog being discovered if you are interacting with your potential readers in their space.  Leave comments on industry blogs, participate in twitter chats about the same topics that your blog covers.  Don’t be lazy and wait to be discovered, get off the couch and in the game.

3 – You Shouldn’t Blog Until You Have Something to Say.  The people telling you this are typically the guys that blog 5 times a year.  They will also tell you that there’s so much noise now that you shouldn’t contribute to it by creating more blogging blather.  My gut feeling is that most of these bloggers aren’t trying to convince you that it’s ok to blog less, they are trying to convince themselves.

Lesson:  As I have been harping on here this year, you become a better blogger by blogging.  The ‘I shouldn’t blog until I have something to say’ line can become an excuse you use to not make the time to blog.  I know from my own experiences that the more I blog, the easier it becomes.  I can blog once a week and spend roughly the same amount of time on that 1 post as I do blogging 4-5 times a week.  Why?  Because when I blog more often, I can more easily spot blogging ideas.  Writing is like anything else, the more you do it and the more frequently you do it, the easier it becomes.

4 – Blogging is dead and social media has killed it.  Ah yes the ‘blogging is dead!’ proclamation.  I think I first started hearing this around 2008 when Twitter started taking off.  This one is easy to fall for, especially if you are a business.  You see that Facebook has 5 billion members and your blog gets 5 visitors a month, and think that’s where you need to be.  But in home-buying terms, with Facebook you are renting, with your blog, you ‘own’ it.  So if the landlord (Facebook) decides to change the rules on you, you can be in big trouble.  But with a blog, you own that space.  You can create the type of content you want, and run promotions and contests.  Plus, the search benefits of blogging speak for themselves.

Lesson: Although blogging is a lot of work, it also has many natural advantages that socnets can’t match.  But you need to decide if blogging is right for your individual needs.  If your customers are using search as a research tool before they make a purchase, then a blog will definitely help you reach potential customers.

5 – If you haven’t started blogging by now, you’ve missed the boat.  Yeah I was hearing this same thing in 2010 and 2008.  The fact is, it’s probably easier for a great writer to stand out now because truly original voices are becoming harder to find.  Even many of the blogging trailblazers are changing their methods to be more like larger websites, more homogenized.  Truly unique voices and approaches will always stand out.

Lesson:  It’s never too late to share your voice.  I started blogging in 2005.  There were already a lot of well-established bloggers by then.  But every year since, a few new bloggers have come ‘out of no where’ and suddenly everyone loves them.  There is always room for smart people with something valuable to say, don’t let a late start keep you from having a start.

What’s the biggest blogging myth that you wish would go away?