play_blip_movie_553468();
As we continue to settle into our new house, a new routine and new surrounds in our suburb I’m being constantly inspired by the lessons I see around me and how they apply to blogging.
In today’s video I want to talk about Grass (Turf that is…)
Our turf is brand new and as a result it needs a lot of attention for the next couple of weeks. If we don’t keep it wet – it’ll die.
Water is crucial at this stage as it is still putting its roots down and getting established.
Similarly – a blog needs to put its roots down in its first few months and can take a lot of work – for seemingly few results. However there’s more going on under the surface than you might think. While reader numbers might not be great those first few readers can spread the word of your blog far and wide, the decisions you make about design, SEO, topic, voice etc all can have a lasting impact upon your blog.
Yes – sometimes blogging is like grass growing – but this slow start up phase usually doesn’t last for ever.
If blogging is like grass growing, I need to get myself some bloody fertiliser!!
In philosophical mode eh ?
Yeah Blogging is like growing grass. Add more fertilizers (promote your blog) and it grows fast.
I liked this post, and I agree…. it takes some serious care and time for a blog to take, however sometimes the person writing the blog just does not know exactly where to go to get all the info, such as SEO information. What would be neat , is for a service to come out for the smaller bloggers such as myself so we can be looked over, and given ideas and pointers to make the ‘growing’ stage a bitter shorter.
Thank you for always putting out great pointers for us to learn by.
A japanese proverb says: “Grass grows slowly, but the cow is patient”…
More seriously I agree with you. I still a baby-blogger (8 months), and I’ve been through phases of “blogging in the desert”. But thanks to work, patience, and good advise (hey, guess where from…), figures start to raise, slowly, but at a constant pace.
To bounce on what Ian N said, there are some fertilisers around, but the harder thing is not to multiply too much ads too early, this could burn a blog I think. I even decided to remove my banner, and just keep a mini ad-sense unit after each post… and strangely those get better CTR !
Muuuuu.
Wow. Great analogy! This came at a good time, when I was beginning to feel frustrated and lose motivation for nurturing my blog.
I really like how you notice the everyday things that we often overlook and are able to turn these observations into advice on blogging. I think sometimes I need to slow down and pay more attention to things that are going on around me. I bet it would give me broader insight into the things I like to talk about.
I was having a moment the other day; feeling like I’m doing so much work and my readership is not what it could be and that I don’t have enough commenters; wah wah wah. But I am reminded by this video and post that this takes time. Thank you. I have to realize it hasn’t been quite three months. I need to calm down, I suppose. LOL.
As long as we’re talking about grass and lawns, we might as well talk about weeds. How careful does one have to be about not letting weeds (off-topic posts) invade the growing lawn as you’re planting your SEO base?
How long does this take? I have been at the same level (~10 readers) ever since the beginning in May 2007
Good metaphor, Darren. ;)
OK – grass growing is one of the things I know about. But what you hadn’t mentioned is that it really takes more than just water to get grass to grow properly. It takes great soil (infrastructure) good fertility (ideas) excellent drainage (sharing ethos) and eventually mowing and weeding (editing) to produce a good turf.
And then you have the maintenance of making a decision to go organic (white hat) or chemical (black hat) in order to get a positive result the neighbours (readers) will admire.
Lawn care is a three-season chore here in the North – and then you get to take a break while snow covers the entire thing (getting human again). If you’ve done it all properly, grass grows pretty darn quickly.
Yeah, I can live with lawns and blogging analogies. :-)
This is a good metaphor…I’m thinking I need to add more complexity to my site so it has something greater to build upon.
Great video. I can relate!
…if we’re lucky.
Lol. I’m watching the grass grow over at my blog right now. I know it will take off–it’s a good blog. Just want to fast forward a little through the grass growing stage.
That’s life though. If I fast-forward too many times I’ll die.
Judging by the title of this post, you’ve been looking at my stats.
The difference between growing a grass and growing your blog is that you really have to put some hard work to get over that first boring phase, whe you give away too much and get back pretty much nothing.
By the way, i love Australia! I’ve been there one time, visiting my brother’s friends. It’s so far the best trip I ever had.
I can really relate to what is being said. But my numbers are growing steadily. Remember, never give up.
For me it´s more like growing flowers:
You start with a small and almost meaningfull seed.
After a while, if you did everything right, your blog will be beautiful and full of life;
Finally, you’ll have the challenge of your life keeping your flower/blog as pretty as before. Only good gardeners will keep their flowers alive and well.
Although viral marketing is crucial during those first few months, the question still begs ‘ how does one initially get those first passionate visitors?’.
Of course, friends and colleagues will visit, but what about attracting the public?
Also, how much help does getting homepage on a social media site, or getting organic search engine rankings for relevant terms and PPCs help in bringing loyal traffic?
Totally agree with you Darren. About 8 months ago I took over the writing for N95blog.com. Constantly nurturing, clipping and tweaking this blog has caused this digital patch of grass to become more green, more healthy and more dense (4.5K pageviews daily and close to 1600 feed subscribers). It takes time, attention and patience.
By the way: Congrats on the new crib, please keep your promise to show everybody around the new problogger’s hideout.
One more thing: What is a digital minded person like you doing in a shirt saying ANALOG??? ;)
I can relate, I recently remarried and live in a nice home, on a golf course. My husband and I both enjoy traveling. sometimes i think he gets jealous of my trips. But when he is gone its amazing how much work I have to do “domestic goddess and engineer, all wrapped up into one..” and you know the rest, chauffer, chef, accountant (or in this case ATM machine for a teenager).
I love to amaze myself and impress my husband when I can take care of a maintenance issue; broken window, you can’t just go out and replace it. Oh no, it took numerous phone calls to Lowes, Home Depot, and window repairmen and the builder to get it replaced. then ofcourse I learned how to put the window in. Mind you this is not the pop-in one either. I had pull the old broken one out, pull the oh, i forget the technical name now, but the spongy stuff on the inside to keep the window from rattling. This was the top window too. Not the one that moves up and down or slides in.
Also, I found out the contractor skipped corners and didnt use the appropriate thickness of glass, this hampered the replacement for me. All in all it took 3 weeks to get it done.
To tie this into websites/internet and blogging, (oh how creative we can be)…
Sometimes we have this learning curve with new, upgraded softwares and have to work through the bugs before we can see the world better. We have to crawl before we can walk, and therefore, even starting a blog and RSS take time. You cant just jump onto squidoo.com and put your lens up in 10 minutes. seriously. Unless you have a lot of material to begin with.
thanks for reading, if you made it this far
happy Holidaze!
Loretta
aka Lois Lane
Interesting observation, i’ve come across a lot of posts on various blogs relating blogging to stuff like truck driving, asking a girl to prom (if i remember right). This is a simple analogy compared to those, but still is something that we all know so well.
Ian N wants some fertilizer, i think thats the point here, you will always get better growth with fertilizer, but in the end nothing can beat natural growth. No one definitely wants to make their grass heavily dependent on fertilizer, right ?
I’ll have to rememeber to maintain that diligence and “water” my next blog regularly during those important beginning stages.
I think people would have a lot more patience if they simply kept in mind that it’s _supposed_ to be like watching grass grow in the beginning. It’s normal to want to see some results immediately, but that’s just not how nature works.
Tonight, in honor of this video post, I shall go sit on the porch with a beer in my hand and stare at the laptop until the sun sets.
Good analogy. I think that my grass is of the very slow growing variety. And then I go on vacation and forget about it for a while. And then in my haste to get some coverage I allow too many weeds to grow. We all dream of that “Yard of the Month” sign, but there are a lot more blogs on the net than there are yards in the neighborhood.
Ok I tried watering my blog but the server just sparked, went *bang* and died.
I don’t think putting water on your blog is a good idea. :(
I think right now the grass is growing faster than my blog! But that is to be expected given the age of my blog.
I have only been doing this for a little over 2 weeks and so far I am happy with the results. My subscriber base has increased by a factor of 10. If I keep that up I will have over 100,000 subscribers in 3 months! I am getting better at writing posts and enjoying it more and more. I find myself paying more attention to what is going on around me and looking for ways to create a post based on that. I know it is a long term project and I am ready to stick it out and see the results.
As long as the grass keeps growing I will be happy.
Hmm…how do I tell if its a slow start up phase or if its as big as its gonna get?
Why is my comment awaiting moderation — and none of the others are?
Interesting.
I’m currently going out and watering my blog today, I loved the timing of this post. Many bloggers right now are comparing blogging to other things.
Nice sized backyard you have there.
My blog is truly a labor of love. It has to be or else I would have given up on it long ago. I pour myself into it every day and after 8 months and over 100 posts later I finally am starting to see that growth you are talking about.
I love my subject matter, so I don’t consider it work, even though building a good blog certainly is work. Stay the course and you will be rewarded I guess.
Great post Darren.
Nice words Darren. As my new blog is almost 4 months young, I just have a small lawn to manage. But over the last weeks, I’m seeing more and more visitors to find my site through all kinds of referers.
If it’s like watching grass grow, I gotta go outside. I love it! :D
The good thing about blogging is that always is a hobby (even when you take it to a Pro level). So watching that kind of grass growing is very satisfying even if you are kinda desperate to see more movement around.
Really liked the comparison, seemed like a spiritual video to bring ourselves to the reality of most starting blogs :-P-
One of the things I’ve found very helpful to help me be patient and keep working is to always have more than one project I’m building. Not too many, I don’t want to scatter my focus, but having something else to work with keeps me working and motivated. This article on Zen Habits was really helpful, as was this one.
So linkjuice and linkbacks would be considered fertilizer then? :) I’m thinking a truck load of fertilizer is a good idea then!
what an accurate analogy — really resonates!
How about some pics of your new house? Better than razor stubble, no? ;)
Good analogy – and I’ve still got a lot of weeds. I finally got around to pulling out that useless Blogrush one though…
Darren you hit the nail on the head here! I’ve been watching my blog slowly grow.. and I mean slowly. I actually have a blog that has grass in the header.. haha. This definitely made me chuckle when I saw it.
Darren, it was quite startling for me (silly right? what you DO is help thousands of bloggers just like me)
It was because I am at that beginning phase – new blog, new to the whole .. build a site thing .. lol I had to google every single step to make it what it is now
Its my labor of love and I really care about the quality of the content I put into it. Every post to every new social networking sign up (another job all in its own) I am working hard on it and it did make me wonder if I’ll ever get this baby to growin’
It was a very encouraging message so thank you for that. Right on time as usual :) I really love this site
btw – that house is really looking great lol
Thank you Darren! :)
Amen! A lot of bloggers give up in those first couple months and jump to a new topic [blush – Quilty!] without ever seeing the rewards ~ they just give up too soon.
Just because your search term is in google in 24 hrs doesn’t mean the traffic will flow immediately.
I totally agree with this part ” for seemingly few results ”
I have a few new blogs and it feels like its taking to long to get results on them.
How about a VIDEO tour of the new place? The house that ProBlogging built?
This post is very true.
Most bloggers will go through the watering phase, hoping for a fertile blog. For must it will not happen overnight and perseverance is the key.
And for those times of drought, you should check out blogs (or even books) in other areas (away from your niche) as they may give you inspiration and get you back on track
Good comparison and great advices how to cherish a blog.
Thanks.
Thank you very much for this post – it is a timely reminder as I get frustrated with my blog. It is a specialized blog (midwifery) so I know I will not have a big audience, but at the same time, it seems to be taking ages to get up and running. What I would like to know is: at what point do you admit defeat?
Darren –
It’s great analogies and stories like the above, which made it a very easy choice for me to name you as one of ‘The Ten Most Inspirational Bloggers of 2007’ in one of my most recent posts.
Kind regards, and I look forward to more of your inspiration and motivation in 2008.
Happy Holidays,
Mark
I think that finding your voice is sometimes th biggest obstacle. We write in an arena saturated with content… The only way to really stand out is to be unique. Insincerity is easy to pick up!
Somehow I’m reminded of this quote:
“The first step to being a real leader is to figure out exactly who you are and be that all the time.” — Cathie Black
I love this article. Awesome analogy you put into this article and I agree 100% with it. When starting your blog, you need to nurture it, water it, cut it, ect.
Mike