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This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:
See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project
Previous article: The secret recipe for blogging success.
BLOGTASTIC: Not all blogging tips are practical
Sometimes experts get carried away too. They present their personal preferences show up as rules for everyone else. Every time you see me (or anyone else) mention rules or tips, think for a moment about the practical applicability of the advice. Make sure it fits your situation.
Specifically, here are some things to consider before you take someone’s advice about blogging.
Personal relevance: what works for the experts may not work for you—even when the “tips” are right.
Timing: Some tips lose their relevance over time. They may have been very relevant when those tips were published, but in six months they may be outdated. In other words, not all tips are timeless. So check out whether those tips are still applicable today. In the world of blogging, things move very fast and you don’t want to be following yesterday’s advice to succeed tomorrow.
Better alternatives: Your goal may be to reach a particular audience, increase blog traffic, or get more links to your blog. You can achieve these objectives in more than one way. You may find a tip that actually works against the specific goal you are trying to achieve.
Ultimately, you want to choose strategies that reach success through the least effort and the highest leverage. You won’t be able to achieve these results when you use strategies that are out of sync with your overall strategy for life or work.
Tip: Get help from others, but add your uniqueness to the mix
Any mature industry will give rise to a lot of experts. With the advent of the Internet, it is easy to access to these experts’ insights. If you have access to these experts, then everyone like you will have access to them too. Hence just following the best practices will put you in the “best of the commodity” category. You have to bring your uniqueness to the mix. The combination is hard to copy.
Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow
