One huge error I made as a new blogger: going it alone.
I tried to do everything by myself. I never bothered networking. Heck; I did not even listen to my readers….mainly because I had no readers. Ha!
Perhaps you know the drill. Write a blog post. Publish the blog post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Maybe Pin it, too. Sit there and wait. Do nothing else. Do not network on social media. Do not comment genuinely on blogs. Never guest post. Simply write and publish 1-2 posts weekly. Or write and publish one blog post daily. Even if you blog daily you are likely in genuine blogging trouble going the journey alone. No one succeeds solo. Blogging is a team sport.
I published a high volume of content to my old blog but did nothing else. I never made friends. I never talked to people on social media. I never commented genuinely on blogs. What happened? Nobody read my blog posts. I published to a chamber of echoes. I shared my blog posts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn but since I made no friends on those sites, nobody followed my blog posts and clicked on my blog post links on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Few people care about you, your blog and your blogging business if you go the blogging journey alone because folks care about you if you care about them. Caring about fellow bloggers and loyal readers begins with engaging bloggers and readers genuinely through your blog, through their blogs, through social media and through guest posting. The blogging journey gets easier and easier for social bloggers because blogging buddies:
- promote you
- endorse you
- buy your stuff
- hire you
Being generous is the simplest way to make blogging friends. Blogging friends accelerate your success. But foolishly, I tried to overcome going solo by volume publishing uber thin content to my blog for a long time. I did not see success with this strategy; nobody listened. I could have published 100 posts daily. Publishing 100 posts for no readers means no one reads my 100 posts and my traffic sits at zero.
Best-case scenario; through sheer will power on my part, perhaps a few hundred people visit my blog daily but no one seems genuinely interested in my blog posts and no one becomes clients or customers because I have no friends, no bloggers who vouch for me, no one who spreads my blogging business via word of mouth marketing. Referral marketing is huge. Guest posting is huge. Connected, generous bloggers influence referral marketing through their blogging buddy network. Connected, generous bloggers land guest post invites through their blogging buddy network.
Blogging buddy networks grow for bloggers who never go it alone but generously, genuinely build a team of blogging friends around them, through their persistent, patient service. I helped many bloggers over the years. I continue to assist many bloggers to the day. Networking freely sure hasn’t hurt me. Not networking freely killed my blogging career over a decade ago. Lesson learned.
I finally fully realized this: I am in the people business. I am in the business of helping human beings through my blog and through blogger outreach. But my blogger outreach campaign is based on generously helping people and expecting nothing in return. I do not try to manipulate or force people to do stuff for me after helping this out. This is not blogger outreach. This is blogger obnoxiousness.
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