With all the social interaction, the sharing of your personal thoughts and having to put yourself out there in an attempt to promote your work, blogging can be a tricky business if you are reserved about it. All the top bloggers are willing to put aside their worries to make their blog a success. Are you willing to open up?
Below are the top five concerns people typically have that holds them back when blogging, complete with reasons why you shouldn’t worry about them.
Don’t be worried that you will run out of ideas
If you have any form of regular publishing schedule it’s quite possible that you will worry about running out of ideas for posts at some point. For the longest time this was one of the biggest reasons why I didn’t (or couldn’t) do guest posts; it was difficult enough trying to keep up the posting schedule for my own blog without worrying about doing content for other sites.
However, think about it; there is a huge amount of inspiration out there. Regardless of whether it is from reading books or websites or just from talking to people, there is always something out there that can spark a new idea when you need it. If you really want to make the most of it, jot down those ideas for use at a later date. You will quickly create a backlog of potential posts. It’s shocking how many ideas get lost simply because they don’t get written down.
Don’t be worried about posting less (or more)
A lot of sites claim that the more you post the more popular you will be. That is generally true if you want to take your blog to the very top (and even then it’s not a hard and fast rule), but for most of us, it really boils down to quality or quantity. I used to post more often than I do now. When I originally made the decision to post less, I was concerned it would effect the number of visitors, subscribers etc. However, I chose to use the extra time I’d created to provide more quality posts. You know what? I didn’t lose half my readers as I feared, quite the opposite in fact!
Don’t be worried about getting personal
The idea of putting up your personal thoughts and feelings on certain topics online for the world to see can be very daunting, especially if those thoughts are controversial or contrarian. It can be tempting to play it safe and write sterile posts, giving little away about the person behind them, like with the average corporate website. However, the personal touch is exactly why blogs are so popular. One idea that has been written about numerous times over the years can suddenly get a new lease of life by a blog covering it from a personal perspective.
Don’t be worried about promoting your work
Don’t worry about submitting every post of value you write to Digg, Stumbled Upon, Reddit, or other social bookmarking sites. That’s what they are there for (they just don’t know it yet 😉 ). As long as you take part in the community and submit quality content from other sites as well, you will have to do much worse to be labeled as a spammer. After all, those sorts of sites are for finding interesting links. You are writing interesting content, right?
Another common practice for promoting your blog is by commenting on other sites. If you think your content relates in some way to a post, don’t be shy about it, leave a comment and let people know. The basic rule is this: as long as you treat your commenting with the same attention as your posts, nobody will care if you slip in a little self-promotion as long as it’s relevant.
Don’t be worried about asking for help
Whenever I’ve had a surge of subscribers it’s usually because I wrote a killer post but what really helped to boost my stats was to actually ask people to subscribe. If I want people to submit content to social bookmarking sites I ask them to. Want comments, opinions and feedback? Ask for it. Want to exchange links? Ask! In over a year of blogging, the worst response I got when I asked for something was… well, actually I didn’t get a reply back. So why are you worried?
So what are your thoughts? For those of you that blog, what’s holding you back?
Written by James, a blogger at Organize IT.