In my daily blogging activities I get to interact with a lot of bloggers from around the world. They have blogs of all shapes and sizes and have a variety of different experience levels. However in the past week I’ve come across quite a few newer bloggers who fit into one of the following two types of bloggers:
1. The Paralyzed Blogger – I’ve come across quite a few bloggers recently who look at the wider blogging community and are so overwhelmed by what they see going. They see blogs with beautiful design, bloggers with incredible gifts of communication, the massive traffic numbers of some of the A-listers and even the big dollars that some bloggers are making – and they get sucked into the trap of comparing their blog with others and end up being quite depressed by what they see – to the point where often they give up.
2. The Hyperactive Tweaking Blogger– I’ve also been bumping into quite a few bloggers that get so inspired by the wider blogging community that they spend 90% of their time tweaking their blog’s design, finding the perfect place for their ads, working on publicity etc that they actually become completely unproductive in terms of creating content for their blog.
(note: I’m not saying every blogger fits into one or the other of these categories – just that I’ve met a lot of them this week).
What is common to both of these groups of bloggers is that get distracted by other blogs and bloggers. The paralyzed comparisons lead them to depression and giving up while the Hyperactive Tweaker’s comparisons lead them to working on secondary items to the detriment of content.
While I’m a big believer in watching and interacting with other bloggers (I’ve learned virtually everything I know from them… from you!) there comes a time when a successful blogger needs to knuckle down to do the hard work of creating their own content and to do their own thing.
Most successful bloggers that I come across have a good understanding of the wider blogging community (especially the niche that they operate in) but also have a healthily positive view of their own blog, a sense of what makes their blog unique, a plan for where they see it going and a willingness to work toward their goals over time.
Of course I qualify that rather long sentence with the word ‘most’ because some successful bloggers are just very lucky!
