After my early years of blogging (which began in 2009) I came to realize that three factors played a critical role in my blogging success as well as my personal growth and development. First let me say that each of us has our own set of individual goals and benchmarks we use to determine what we mean by blogging success. My goals are simple.
For example, this is the tagline I used on my very first blog.
I'm here to learn, to teach and to connect!
No matter what your goals are or what your definition of blogging success is, I'd like to share with you what I've learned in hopes that you can apply these principles to your advantage on your journey to becoming a successful blogger.
The Path To Blogging Success
Connections – the first step
If you have a single ounce of personality, you'll find that it's not at all difficult to make connections online that can further your blogging success. After all, that's what social networking is all about, and people flock to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google +, StumbleUpon and others, for the sole purpose of meeting new people and forming relationships. Blogging communities and forums are also prime real estate for connecting new bloggers with blogging influencers.
Check out this short list of targeted blogging and social communities I'm active in and in most cases I have become a top user:
Collaborations – Crucial to your blogging success
Gail Gardner from GrowMap wrote a post that has a powerful message that we should all take to heart. In Collaborating is THE Word for 2012 Gail stressed the importance of making the distinction between those we meet and interact with online, versus those that are truly supportive of our objectives.
We all need to be creating “inner circles” or Tribes or collaborations. No matter what you call them they are essential to our success. ~ GrowMap
Once you begin the process of forming your own inner circle (similar to the ones you might set up in Google +) and collaborate on a few projects together, you'll be one step closer to your goals.
Confidence – the final step in your blogging success
This is really the most complicated aspect of blogging success and one that most often takes the longest amount of time to achieve. With all of the new technologies on the horizon, building confidence is also a new blogger's biggest challenge. Be careful not to confuse confidence with cockiness. First of all, you should master a skill or a technique – or at least obtain a high level of proficiency with it – before you begin to feel confident about completing a given task. If you plan to distribute an ebook or sell a product, people won't be interested unless you've demonstrated that you know what you're talking about. This will only happen over time.
Take a class with Lynda.com, Udemy, or you can even visit my online school. Learn all you can and be sure to take action and put into practice what you've learned! In time you will build a portfolio that demonstrates your expertise, boosts your online reputation, and grows your influence. Don't be afraid to do some guest posting, conduct blogger interviews and participate in blogger roundups when possible. If you make a mistake, don't worry – we all do it! Learn from those mistakes and your confidence will get stronger each time as your skill set continues to improve.
The 3 C's
Connections. Collaborations. Confidence. Those are my three C's and I hope you find encouragement from this post.
You might even have your own set of C's.
Now it's your turn to leave a comment and tell me how you define blogging success.