The following post on Optimizing Blog growth has been submitted by Aaron Wall from SEOBook.
Many of my friends who are would be bloggers are afraid to start blogging because they are afraid of being wrong or writing something that might make them look foolish.
They want to make sure they know everything BEFORE they write anything. So they never do….
Image by Meredith Farmer
That model of thinking is generally self defeating for no less than 4 important reasons:
- Nobody knows everything: in some cases, as you learn more you appreciate how much you don’t know, so it is hard to build enough confidence to feel like an expertise because self doubt can be consuming if you do not have a feedback network set up. Worse yet, in most markets worth participating in new information is always coming out, so you can’t catch up without establishing a base and getting feedback.
- Authority is granted: being considered an authority is not about how much you know…it is about how much people THINK you know. Just writing regularly gives you an active audience acquisition stream while building a passive stream via the content archives.
- We love empathy: if the reader feels they are learning along with the blogger they are far more likely to want to come back and read more. They are also more likely to tell friends about you. If you wait until you know almost everything then you might write at a level above most readers and end up with a small audience and no viable business model. Trust in search engines is established via analyzing linking patterns. You don’t get links for what you know and don’t share. Share from the start and you have content for just about everyone.
- Feedback teaches: reading and writing regularly teaches you how to write clearly. As you write and see some of your ideas fail while others are far more successful than you would have thought you learn what people are interested in, what ideas will spread, and why they spread.
Virtually everyday I see experts in my field write things that are absolutely wrong, but go unquestioned. I have been guilty of it myself in the past, and as I learn more in the future I will likely discover that I was guilty of it today.
You can wait until your knowledge is perfected before you start writing, or you can learn from and with your readers while building trust, distribution, leverage, and social relationships. Learning as you go is a better optimized strategy than waiting for the day you know everything.
