Over the last few days we’ve been talking about taking your blog to the often-elusive “next level.”
We’ve seen tips for developing your voice and message, creating stronger calls to action, and increasing traffic.
If you’re already working on those aspects of your blog, and are happy with your approach, you’ll probably be hungry for other ideas, looking to the future, and trying to predict what will be most successful tactics for you.
I know I do this myself—I’ll get an idea like the QLD blogging challenge and throw myself into making it happen.
That’s great—one of the best things about blogging is that it lets us pursue our passions!—but I have noticed a tendency to let things drop off my To Do list as these new ideas pop up. An example was pointed out by Ed Boyhan on my Google + post. He wrote:
“Seems kinda odd: here you are providing some useful info on how some use G+, but nowhere on this page is there a “+1″ button to let me share with a circle I have for future reference. Makes me doubt your involvement in the G+ community.”
This is a valuable comment for two reasons. First, it’s a reminder of something I need to do, which dropped off my list. Whoops! Second, it explains what the implications of that oversight are—how that looks to my readers, which gives me motivation not just to get that task back on the To Do list, but also to actually act upon it and make that change to my blog.
But I know I’m not the only one who hesitates or overlooks small blogging tasks that, logically, I have no excuse not to have done!
Take a look at the comments on Kelly Crawford’s recent post, If Your Email Newsletter Isn’t Generating Cash You’re Doing Something Wrong.
Many of the people who responded to that post admitted that they hadn’t tried out some of the most common, and proven, newsletter marketing techniques for one reason or another, even though they knew they should, and wanted to.
All this makes me wonder if we wouldn’t see some big advances on our blogs if we just got through some of those little, should-have-done-it-ages-ago tasks that we keep pushing aside (even if we have good reason for doing so).
What if each of us put a day aside in the next week to knock as many of those little tasks off our To Do lists for good? What difference would that make to our blogs over the longer term? If nothing else, it would probably give each of us a much more solid platform from which to try to climb to the “next level.”
At the very least, let’s start by admitting some of the things that have slipped off our To Do lists. Don’t be embarrassed—I bet the things you’ve neglected aren’t as basic as my G+ sharing oversight!
What do you know you’re not doing, that you should be doing? Admit it in the comments. (You might even help remind the rest of us of other things we’ve forgotten we should be doing…) Even getting a small task off your list could be a big step in the right direction for your blog.
