Choose Your Poison

Negativity is poisonous. So is positivity. Choose wisely with which you’re going to poison your audience.

When Our Blog is New, How Often Should We Post?

Here’s my brain dump so far. This might not look like a completed blog post, but we’ll see if this kind of format works.

• Our posting frequency sets our readers’ expectation for future posts. Some people might leave if you post too frequently. Some people might leave if we post too rarely, thinking our blog has gone to the graveyard of ideas.
• Then again, early on we might or might not have too many readers, so it will depend. If you are a relatively unknown blogger with a new blog, worrying about readers’ expectation is a good practice but might not be the main issue yet. It will be a different story if your blog is new but you’re already famous (like Fortuitous).
• If we post frequently early on, the more we provide many interesting contents for new visitors. I don’t think there’s more compelling reason for reader to subscribe to our blog other than when they find good contents over and over again.
• However, posting frequently might result in our own disappointment seeing that our ideas are met with little pageviews/comments/traffic/interests in general (our blog is new, after all!). Note that, once you hold firmly to your ideas and you have lots of confidence with them, you will be able to ward off those stupid thoughts that “my ideas aren’t good enough for others”.
• If we post slowly early on, what would be the downside? I believe that a blog grows by the usefulness of every post, e.g: it’s not the quantity that matters anymore, but quality. If you can be sure to bring excellent post every time, why not keep it slow and steady so you have more time to prepare your next great blog post?
• Also remember that the universe we’re living in is so much bigger than our blogs. We have other things to care about, families, children, friends, our other dreams. So, there’s completely no reason to hate slow posting schedule if you need to take the time to manage other things as well. Your blog is yours, not the other way.

Do you have any other ideas you’d like to add here?

Three Plain Steps to Successful Blogging

Success, I should say, is a rather simple process. Too often we forget about simple things in the midst of the never-ending stream of information. However, beneath the simplicity there lies great strength and knowledge. So, without further ado, here’s my Three Plain Steps to Successful Blogging.

Step 1: Have No Problem Believing in Your Dream.

Step 2: Put Yourself in a State as if You’ve Reached Your Dream, and Act Accordingly.

Step 3: Carry on.

That is all.

The Third Step to Successful Blogging

The third step to successful blogging is to carry on.

It’s that simple. Whether you fail, whether you succeed, you should carry on. Perseverance is key. That’s what separate the successful bloggers and the others.

It will take time, so just don’t stop.

There is no fourth step.

The Second Step to Successful Blogging

I previously wrote about the first step to successful blogging here.

The second step to successful blogging is that you must put yourself in a state as if you have reached your dream, and then act accordingly.

If you are already a successful blogger, how are you going to schedule your posts? What would you write? How would you entertain, teach, and congratulate your audience?

If it’s hard for you to imagine yourself to be the successful person you aim to be, then step two is not for you, yet. Learn to imagine and dream more and more, and try to believe it.

Is Blogosphere a Graveyard of Ideas?

Do you realize how many blogs are available out there? I have lost track of the statistics, but I’m sure tens of thousands blogs are created every day. New voices, new ideas, new conversations.

I am worried that the blogosphere is turning into a graveyard of ideas.

The reasoning, simply, is that there are lots and lots of unrecognized voices out there. Brilliant ideas, interesting reads, all drowned within the noise of so many cats blog (i.e: blogs that just tell about what the blogger’s cat just ate, and such).

Some, hopefully, are indexed properly in search engines, waiting to be picked up by someone with the correct keyword. The rest, I believe, remain in the dark. This brings me into thinking that if you cared about your idea, it’s really important to be responsible about it. By responsible I mean that you must do your best to let people know about it, let conversations grow around it, let it stand the test of time under the scrutiny of your audiences.

Leaving your precious ideas in the hands of fate or (ahem) search engine indexes might not be the best plan to have.

If your idea is important to you, then there’s no other way but to learn how to let the rest of the world know. No, simply writing it in your blog is not equal to letting the rest of the world know. Brilliant idea tend to illuminate itself by default, but without proper marketing skill we had better prepare a new tombstone celebrating its tragic death.

It’s a huge world out there, the blogosphere. Most of them burial grounds. I hope your (and my) blog is out there doing crazy things to keep it alive and thus, negating the dark and gloomy atmosphere of the graveyard of ideas.

The First Step to Successful Blogging

Actually, this is a general rule for pretty much everything you wanted to be successful in. Applies perfectly to blogging, of course:

The first step to be successful is that you must have no problem believing in your dream.

That is all. Have a nice day, my kind readers.