Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
I have zero problems injecting personal stories into my blog.
Readers appreciate my travel tales.
Blogging mainly for your fun is key.
We need inner drivers to stand out from the blogging crowd of sheeple who try to follow, mimic and imitate leaders.
But your blog cannot be all about you.
One clear reason for this truth reveals itself anytime you scan mainstream meeting spots for bloggers.
Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups prove to be a smart study in why blogs cannot be all about you.
Simply assess the typical engagement rate on Groups. Almost nobody Likes updates, replies to updates or visits blogs based on updates.
Why?
Most bloggers share content that does not solve specific problems suffered by group members. Most bloggers share content well outside of the group niche. Most bloggers do no re-visit groups, reply to any Likes or comments and rarely if ever build relationships with fellow blogger members.
Blog traffic = interested individuals who frame your blog as a resource which solves their problems.
Why would anyone visit your blog through Facebook Groups if they never see you:
- listen to their problems?
- solve their problems through your blog?
- engage you with comments on Facebook Groups?
Blog traffic flows to bloggers who at least partially make blogging about their readers.
First, one listens to reader needs. Then one publishes content that solves reader needs. Then one shares the content in spots where readers meet. From there, return traffic, community and blogging business grows.
But if blogging is all about:
- your needs
- your thoughts
- your feelings
through your blog, Facebook Groups and the online world in general you will ignore the needs of readers, miss opportunities for connection, struggle, fail and quit.
Of course, the struggling, failing and quitting appears easy to see via Facebook Groups because almost no bloggers get engagement and few make these groups about anyone other than themselves.
Self-Centered Dis-ease
Being self-centered – meaning that you temporarily think only about yourself, your blog, your blog traffic and blogging income – makes you do bizarre, odd things that repels most human beings.
Thinking only about yourself breeds fear of loss. Blogging from a fear of loss scares one into doing unattractive things.
This is a dis-ease that needs to be addressed in mind for inner curing.
Facing self-centered fears, feeling and forgiving these energies compels one to think outward about others. Thinking outward about others makes one truly helpful and engaging. Generous, social bloggers succeed in driving blog traffic and blogging income.
Practical Example
As a practical example of a self-centered dis-ease – so you can identify and correct this error – you may see bloggers reply to updates on Facebook Groups with comments pointing to their blog.
For example, I share long-form blog posts about blogging tips to these groups. Some bloggers reply with comments advising group members to visit their blogs along with a link to their blogs.
Any comment that does not relate to the blog post and Facebook Group update is considered spam because it is off-topic, irrelevant and at the end of the day, self-centered. Of course you only think about yourself and your blog if you drop a spam comment trying to get readers to visit your blog in response to a blog post themed update published to a Facebook Group from another blogger.
Being this self-centered reveals that the dis-ease needs curing fast or else failure with continue. Sooner than later, you will be banned from groups with this egoic, childish behavior largely frowned upon by generous, genuine group members.
I tend to delete 1-2 comments from spamming bloggers on groups but block each blogger who drops 2-3 spam comments or more in reply to these updates in groups as a time-saving mechanism and to keep group integrity intact. Any group that becomes a spam fest quickly degrades until no one visits it save to drop a spam-type update. Eventually, no one reads any post and activity ceases.
What happened?
Blogging became all about the individual bloggers trying to get traffic and income for themselves, the mass dis-ease permeated the group and since potential readers knew it was all about the ego and not helping people they stopped visiting the groups all together.
Success Is in Helping Others
Success is in helping others.
How it works: you listen to reader problems, solve their problems with your blog post and build a community who flocks to your blog to read and share your blog posts.
Monetizing your blog involves opening income channels through which you share value and receive money.
For example, I created blogging guides through my online courses to share value and to receive money.
I help people who have no idea how to get featured on famous blogs and how to become a professional blogger by selling each of these courses.
Both are highly helpful, beneficial resources for bloggers who want exposure and/or wish to go pro because I lay out the steps for achieving these tasks in simple, effective formatting.
Basically guys, taking each course is like going to blogging school to get a blogging education.
Being educated is highly helpful because you avoid the frustration, agitation and deflating quitting that occurs when you try to figure out blogging by yourself – for free – and become completely overwhelmed with trying to piece together a full blogging education with blog posts, videos and podcasts.
Now you can learn all you need to know about the two topics in the proper formatting.
I only created each helpful online course because I listened closely to you.
Helping Others Depends on Listening to Others
I created each course based on listening closely to reader needs.
First, Blogging From Paradise readers brought me questions. I proceeded to create each detailed course based on your needs.
I had to listen to you before knowing how to help you.
Doesn’t that make sense?
I didn’t say to myself:
“Let me help them with what I think they need help with.”
That line of thinking is a recipe for blogging failure.
Listen to readers before creating anything. Hear their problems. Create content and resources to solve their problems.
Blogging has to be partially about them, at the very least, for you to succeed.
Conclusion
Blog your fun.
But do not make blogging all about you.
Listen to your readers.
Solve their problems.
Happy readers will accelerate your blogging success.
