You’re a writer and strategist at the same time
11 May 2009,,What’s the goal of your personal blog?”, I asked on Twitter. Everybody seems to approach their personal blog in a totally different way. Alper Çuğun (@alper) for example, mentioned that he uses his blog as a public CMS. Andrew Block (@andrewblock) defined the goals of his blog four years ago. One Twitter user, Erwin Blom (@erwblo), responded that by I want too much strategy. ,,Blogging is about telling stories and having conversations, in every possible form,” he said. I understand what he means and have just one thing to add. Not in 140 characters but in a post.., on my personal blog.
Let me start with a basic assumption: you blog to get your ideas and stories under the attention of others. If you’re not and treat your blog as a diary or personal archive, that’s perfectly ok. The idea behind this post though, is that you want to get your word out.
I'm sure this musician wants an audience. Photo Flickr / Guido van Nispen
Blogging is all about telling stories and having conversations, I’m with Blom on that one. There’s only one difference between Blom and a lot of other bloggers: he already had a reputation, a personal brand as you will. For those of you who are not from Holland: before Blom started blogging, he already was an influential in the Dutch music and new media scene. With such a great track record, you never have to start from scratch.
A lot of beginning bloggers don’t have such a large network. When I started blogging, I was studying communication science. Just like 300 others that year. In order to get attention, I had to use certain strategies. Like video taping an argument between the Dutch prime-minister and a famous tv journalist. Or interviewing the 100 top marketing bloggers about their blogging adventures.
For beginning bloggers who don’t have an impressive track record yet, branding strategies are of the utmost importance. Otherwise you’re just blogging for yourself.
So if you’ve just started blogging: think of non-intrusive ways to get attention for your blog. Don’t spam your influentials, always keep in mind that you have to add value for others. Interview them, write a post in which you share your best tips, do something extraordinary.
But most of all, take the advice of Blom for granted. Write those beautiful stories. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to think of some techniques to reach the people you want to inspire.
Want to read more?
- Here’s how I interviewed the 100 top marketing bloggers.
- If you’re Dutch, Blom’s personal blog is here. Not from Holland? Read the posts I’ve written about him on this blog
- An excellent post about personal branding and getting attention on Skelliewag: How to Start (or Start-over) Building Your Personal Brand
- The Blog Promotion archive on Problogger.net
Some other posts you might be interested in:
Can't get enough of the Dutch problogger?
Did you find this post inspiring or useful? Subscribe to my RSS like 898 others did and receive original and daring blog tips right there in your reader. You can also get an email alert whenever I post something new.
Categorie: blog tips
Tags: erwin blom, strategy, twitter
I’m always struggling between a) just writing my stories and communicate my URL through Twitter, bios’s, business cards and stealing people’s phones (and bookmark myself, that really works!, I got at least 10 steady readers by doing that) or b) actively promoting myself on internet by guest posts, linklove, comments etc. I just can’t find the motivation to put all the effort in this. My strategy now is to tell everyone who could care, they go to my blog and see that I’m really as much as an expert as I said I was. That works. But in the end all my PR is being done through telling people. Which is obviously not very scalable. Obviously I want my articles to be read by as much people as possible, it just seems to cost way too much time and energy. In the end I’m not a professional blogger, I have a job to focus on. And that job gives me way more leads than a blog could ever do.
I still want to be read though…inner struggle…
I had the same struggle. Now I just write for Dutchproblogger.com whenever I feel like it, about blog-related stuff which comes to mind during work. Most of the articles are based on ‘why didn’t I come up with before’ or ‘I should write this down’-moments.
Then I post it to Twitter and bring it under the attention of people I’ve mentioned in the post.
That does it for me. It’s great to have a personal blog with a couple of loyal readers like Elisabeth and you who post interesting remarks.
I like the question. What is the goal of my Real Food Lover blog (in 140 Twitter words? “My goal: inspire, inform, entertain and enlighten my readers about eating healthy food quickly, cheaply with wisdom and grace: how we eat affects the bigger picture.”
That was handy – I feel I just wrote my mission statement.
As for promotion, I would add: enter blog competitions or start your own.
Glad that helped you coming up with a mission statement Elisabeth :-)
Did a blog competition really worked for you? I also see them as a waste of time, but maybe I’m wrong?
Re blog competitions – they are useful because you get to ‘meet’ other bloggers and hopefully make good matches so you actually WANT to visit and comment on each other’s blogs. (I hate perfunctory comments – I want real heartfelt ones!).
I did run a competition and got two (excellent) entries but after that I decided they were not worth the effort. However I had made the competition too complicated. I would consider running another, more simple, one, and also use Twitter to promote it.
Entering the BLOG08 competition was fun and led me to meet all you guys and attend one of the the most lively conferences ever! And get one of my posts in the BLOG08 book – which was great to explain to bemused non-internet users what a blog is.
And now my blog is shortlisted for the prestigious peer-judged UK Guild of Food Writers’ Awards for New Media – that is useful too especially for my work as a freelance editor/journalist.
As a writing coach, I tell students to enter writing competitions. They create deadlines and force literary activity. Any prizes are a bonus.
So yes – I think competitions are worth it…