I still very strongly believe that comments and conversation are absolutely best practices for blogging (with good moderation), but it does raise an interesting point about blogging / writing / marketing on the internet… everything is always changing.

A few years ago, Spencer Johnson wrote a great little book simply entitled Who Moved My Cheese?. An excerpt of the description summarizes the story well…

Who Moved My Cheese? is a parable that takes place in a maze. Four beings live in that maze: Sniff and Scurry are mice–nonanalytical and nonjudgmental, they just want cheese and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. Hem and Haw are “littlepeople,” mouse-size humans who have an entirely different relationship with cheese. It’s not just sustenance to them; it’s their self-image. Their lives and belief systems are built around the cheese they’ve found. Most of us reading the story will see the cheese as something related to our livelihoods–our jobs, our career paths, the industries we work in–although it can stand for anything, from health to relationships. The point of the story is that we have to be alert to changes in the cheese, and be prepared to go running off in search of new sources of cheese when the cheese we have runs out.

It’s a wonderful illustration of all of life, but I think it applies to the world of the internet and blogging. Our industry changes with the wind. New software platforms rise and fall. Blogging services come and go. The rules of search engine optimization are always in flux. And the web culture is an ocean with unpredictable currents beneath the surface, always ready to move us in some new direction.

Here’s the question… are you adaptable? Can your blog handle the future?

Google gets it, like it or not. They may make a mistake someday, but to this point, they’ve had enough of a handle on the web to see that people want to compute in a cloud, so with email, apps, collaboration, calendars and everything in between, they’re fulfilling those demands. Yahoo doesn’t get it, in my estimation. They’re still hoping someone will turn down a dead end street to arrive at Yahoo and stay there.

You’ve heard of “survival of the fittest.” It applies online too and your blog can become a momento rather quickly if you aren’t on guard and aware. This raises some important challenges for how we blog down the road:

• Be aware of web culture – become a student of the direction things are going.
• Decide if you’re going to go with the flow of technology or hold on to yesterday’s techniques in your cold dead hands. It was nice knowing you.
• Critique everything about your blog at all times: the design, the structure and layout, the conversational systems, the community management, and the voice of your writing.
• Adapt. Or go extinct.

The rate of change in our industry is accelerating and we’re either going to keep pace or perish. How do you see things shaping up? What are the trends we need to be aware of for this year and the next? Who are the people, companies, or apps to watch? And how do you adjust on the fly without losing your soul?

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Oh the Interwebs! Adapt or Go Extinct

Blogging is coming to maturity as an industry, but it’s going through some growing pains. In fact, it may be in an awkward growth stage and seeking its own identity amid the plethora of promotional tactics.

In the beginning, blogging was about journaling. Now blogging is about marketing and news (but there’s still room for the personal journal too). Many bloggers, especially those who value blogging as a powerful social media platform, see blogging as a conversational tool. Traditional media seeks to feed news to the masses, while new media seeks to create conversations about news among the smaller tribes. But that’s still up for debate.

Yesterday, it was announced that Engadget was turning off comments. This might seem like a simple move made for a simple reason – to ward off inflammatory comments – but it’s certainly sparked a lot of discussion about the nature of the “blog” as we know it.

My headline might have caught your attention because of your vehement disagreement with the idea that listening is optional, and I would have to agree with your disagreement. The rise of conversation marketing, especially as it is carried out through the vehicle of blogging, is extremely important to our industry. The question is, should we be alarmed at any sign of reversal? Should we care at all what Engadget does with their own blog?

The better question is probably this: do we understand just how important listening is to the entire spectrum of social media today (at which blogging is still the center)? If blogging is not only a reporting method, but also a tool for generating conversation, then listening must be extremely important as it’s really the chief cornerstone of what conversation is all about.

My own approach to decision-making, communication, and leadership tends to be marked by listening, then responding, then listening some more. Only when we understand our readers, clients, consumers, or fans can we rightfully expect to garner their full attention when we speak.

I don’t know what you’ll decide in the future about comments on your blog, I just know that we absolutely must keep listening. And in the spirit of this, what are your thoughts?

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Conversation Is Essential. Listening is Optional.

We had the opportunity to interview Evan Britton. Evan is a longtime internet veteran who founded Sency in 2009. The goal of Sency is to bring real time content, links, and tools to internet users in an organized and simple fashion. I’ve been fascinated by how Sency’s tools can be put to use by bloggers and we wanted Evan to share some thoughts with you as well.

FYB:

Evan, tell us a little bit about your own background. How did things develop in your life to the point of launching Sency?

Evan:

I went to the first ever Twitter conference in Los Angeles – seeing the functionality that was offered through their API motivated me to build Sency.

FYB:

And why is the real-time web such a big deal? In other words, why should bloggers be taking notice?

Evan:

For years, many companies have tried to launch a search engine offering a new way to search. These new engines picked up steam because they didn’t offer the user something new. The real time web is different, it gives you a window into people’s minds at any time in regards to any subject matter. Bloggers have the ability to utilize this real time data to add in functionality to their site and learn more about what is being said right now in their respective niches.

FYB:

How do you see real-time search results shaping the future of how people browse the internet and utilize services?

Evan:

Many searches will always be best performed via Google. If you want to shop, or learn information about something, Google is the way to go. However, if you want to see what is being said right now about any person, event, sports team, or anything else – a real time search is the way to go. This new way to search is unique in that today the results will be different from what they were yesterday. Its instant, you are seeing what is happening right now in regards to a given keyword.

FYB:

What tools are available to help bloggers get a handle on the real-time web, and tell us in particular what Sency offers?

Evan:

There are a wealth of tools out there. I wrote about several real time web tools here. Sency offers bloggers the ability to have automatically updating, real time information, scrolling on their blog for any keyword. This information can add value to a blog instantly.

FYB:

If you can, give one example of how a blogger might utilize a real-time tool like Sency for research and blogging?

Evan:

Visit RealTimeBball.com. Click on your favorite pro basketball team, and you’ll see content scrolling for that respective team. So, a blog about the Knicks, can have scrolling automatically updating content for anytime someone mentions the knicks on the real time web. The second half of this youtube video gives a great tutorial for how to use the Sency widget.

FYB:

What other insights can you share about the power of the real-time web? What haven’t we covered?

Evan:

I think that bloggers should make a point to perform real time web searches in regards to the keywords of their industry weekly. Doing this can show you what people are saying and this can lead to ideas for future blog posts. Also, implementing real time web tools into a blog can have several benefits and over time, these tools are going to improve with time so it will be beneficial to get involved in the early going.

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Blogging and the Real-time Web

Beginning bloggers have a common problem: their writing isn’t up to snuff yet. That’s no surprise; blogging is new to them, and any new skill takes time to learn.

Now, most bloggers respond to the problem of being a beginner in one of three ways:

Beginning bloggers who ignore their mistakes

This is the most common response to being a beginner and learning a skill. The web is full of abandoned blogs created by people who never figured out why they weren’t getting readers.

The simplest answer? Those blog owners weren’t getting any better at the practice of writing. Poor writing means an inadequate blog, which in turn means no readership and no popularity. I can’t say I recommend this option.

Beginning bloggers who fret about their mistakes

When you’re a beginner at any skill at all, you are bound to make mistakes. There’s absolutely no way of avoiding that.

Unless – and this is a trap a lot of bloggers fall into – you check and double-check every single word to make sure it’s absolutely perfect. Some new bloggers wind up spending several hours on each blog post, trying to make sure every word is spelled properly, every grammatical rule has been met and every punctuation mark is correct.

These bloggers have good intentions, but they’re missing the point: you’re not trying to avoid mistakes when you’re starting so much as you’re trying to get to the point where you can write without making any at all. And that brings us to our third category of people.

Beginning bloggers who learn to be better writers

“Wait!” you say. “We were talking about mistakes and how to avoid them!”

That’s right, we were. If you look at the websites of professional bloggers you admire, I guarantee you that almost none of them are fretting about doing it wrong. None of them are worried about making mistakes. Not even typos.

That’s because they know they’re good writers, and the very idea that they might make a mistake is no longer keeping them from producing excellent content.

So you accidentally left one of the letters out of a long word? So what! The article is sound, it’s well-written, and it’s enjoyable to read. When you find that typo, you’ll fix it. Meanwhile, your blog is still producing great content.

What’s the lesson here?

When you’re a beginning blogger, the key to success isn’t avoiding mistakes. The key is becoming a better overall writer so that mistakes are a completely irrelevant issue. And how do you become a better writer? The simple answer is, of course, to write. A lot.

Of course, when you’re writing your post and you want it to be good, it’s not exactly comforting to think that you’ll only be writing well by the 20^th post and that it’ll take that long to reach excellent quality. You want this post to be good, the one you’re writing right now.

The reason people say you have to write a lot in order to write well is that it usually takes about fifty pages’ worth of awkward, choppy writing to get to writing that flows out seamlessly. The more you write, the easier you want to make the writing process on yourself. You’ll learn to avoid mistakes that you commonly make and naturally shape a certain storyline every single time.

Writing becomes effortless the more you practice it.

So what do you do about those first posts? Write them. And rewrite them. And rewrite them again. And, yes, again.

If you’re brand new to writing, I highly recommend you write and rewrite a post at least – and this is going to sound like a shocking number – 10 times. From start to finish.

Bear in mind I didn’t say “edit” them. Don’t go through and just change a word here or tweak a sentence there. You pull up a new document and you start writing the whole post all over again.

Rewriting completely helps you organize your thoughts better. You’ll start to put your points in the most logical order because that’s how you remember them. One flows into the next. The more you make the argument, the more coherent the argument becomes.

Ditto for writing style. As you rewrite your posts, your style will become more eloquent, more enjoyable to read, because you’ll only remember the phrases that stood out in your head the first time. Every time you write the post over again, it retains all the best parts of the previous post, as well as any new bits of good writing you can summon up this time.

Your tenth draft will be an amalgam of all the good writing you managed over those 10 pages. And that tenth draft will be really good. Enough to be a final post you can publish with pride.

Yes, rewriting is a method that takes a long time. But it does make you a better writer. Which is what you wanted, right?

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How to Make Writing Your Blog Posts Effortless

No one can ignore the elephant in the room. It’s the subject everyone is whispering about. “Elephants in the room” are the stories you can’t ignore – that are too big to be overlooked. Who can ignore Haiti, for example?

Yesterday was kind of a big day in the United States for a couple of reasons. One, President Barack delivered his first official State of the Union address. And two, Steve Jobs presented Apple’s iPad to the world in San Francisco. There were other stories, but these two remained at the top of Google News all day and are still there this morning.

Should you blog about them?

The answer is quite complex and depends on the niche into which your blog falls, as well as your approach to handling breaking news on a regular basis. Some advice…

If your blog is a multi-author news blog, don’t ignore anything. A quick perusal of Technorati’s Top 100 reveals that almost none of the most read blogs are single-author. They are essential online magazines or newspapers. Blogs may have had their beginnings as personal journals, but the power of blogging couldn’t be missed by major news outlets and even opened the door for new contenders.

If you’re attempting to be a multi-author online magazine that covers everything about a niche, don’t miss the big news stories. Whether you use Google Alerts or a flood of RSS feeds, keep up with what’s happening in your niche. How disappointing would it be for a “tech blog” to miss the iPad?

If your blog is a single-author blog, then you decide, but be aware of where journalism is headed and realize that you might just have a promising future there! Realize that whatever is being written about pushes news to the top of the social web. This is why every blogger is a bit of a journalist, even if many journalists are (quite understandably) uncomfortable with this fact.

If you’re going to break news and cover the big stories, do it well. For example…

• Be first (or somewhere near it). You probably new the iPad was coming, what with all the rumors, so why not have a post half-prepared in draft form, ready to break the moment Steve starts talking.
• Be credible – cite sources. Transcripts of President Obama’s speech were being made available even as it was happening, so your source is provided for you.
• Be opinionated – take a side. It’s your blog, right? People will get the news elsewhere, they’re most likely looking for a fresh perspective or a second angle to consider.
• Be bold enough. We face the temptation to think to ourselves, “What business do I have tackling this?” Tackle it anyway.
• Be ready for reactions. When a story is viral, two things begin to happen. People get tired of it and people develop their own opinions quickly. Hopefully, they’ll voice this on your blog. After all, you want reactions right?

When an elephant is in the room, nobody can really concentrate on anything else whether they are talking about it or not. Leaders point it out. In doing so, we grant people the freedom to pursue conversations about the obvious.

What’s your take? Are bloggers journalists? Should you break stories? Have you broken a story that caused a stir?

photo credit: David Blackwell

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Blogging About the Elephants In the Room

Our water, air, and soil is polluted. Space is polluted too somehow. And so is the blogosphere!

In August of last year, Brian Cray wrote a single blog post that not only grabbed my attention – I remembered where to find it five months later. He wrote about 5 great examples of popular blog posts that you should know.

The post isn’t really what it seems to be. In fact, Brian chose the title for the purpose of raising the eyebrows of the design community which has seen a massive influx of design blogs – some great and useful, others not so much. He issued a call back to originality with the closing words of his post:

Unless you’re Abuzeedo doing inspirational posts or Smashing Magazine doing roundups, this is a call to stop using these formulas and think of new ways to add value to your readers and to the community.

Provide a practical how-to
State strong opinion
Research something new and report it
In some way teach readers something
Do smaller, detailed roundups for a specific cause

Brian was bold and even polarizing. As a blogger, he was willing to create a stir… or even a stink. You may read his post and completely disagree with his thoughts and may have valid counterpoints of your own. But there are two things we need to acknowledge about Brian’s post:

1. He’s bearing the truth. It’s impossible to glance around the blogosphere long and not see the volumes of junk being pumped into the industry’s atmosphere. Linkbait has its place, like candy bars, but a steady diet of fluff won’t take us where we need to go in the future.
2. He started a conversation. He forced a lot of people in the design community to examine and evaluate their own blogging habits, which is the kind of conversation our industry definitely needs.

In order to keep the industry clean, we need to ask some hard questions. Are we willing to make traffic and monetization secondary to quality and trust? Are we willing to suffer criticism and endure controversy to push people to think beyond the current boundaries? Are there going to be true thought leaders among the blogging industry, or will we all just follow each other around, repeating the same techniques forever?

So let’s keep the blogosphere clean, shall we? Let’s have a goal of purity in our writing, honesty in our marketing, excellence in our design, and potency in our content. Thoughts? I know you’re bound to be thinking something after all that you just read…

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Bloggers Unite: Let’s Keep the Blogosphere Clean

People in our modern, mind-numbing culture are now trained to interact with the information that they’re confronted with. They don’t just want to read a how-to guide for fixing a leaky sink. They want to learn how to fix their sink while laughing, while crying, while leaving comments and while interacting with the author and other readers. Information delivery has drastically changed.

So sit back like that old, stubborn man that you so desperately hated when you were a young and spirited kid. Endlessly complain about the bane of our modern culture. Cry that people’s attention spans are shorter because they’re addicted to the television and entertainment. Moan because normal people can’t consume boring, raw information like they once could. Shout as loud as you can that they need to be more disciplined, that they need to learn how to learn.

You could partake in that worthless drivel or you can understand that we can’t change who people are. Society will run its course and if we reject society then society will reject us. Go ahead and embrace the fact that people want to engage with your information differently than they used to. Get used to the idea that I want to be entertained when I’m reading a how-to guide.

Once you embrace that oh-so-difficult-to-embrace concept then jump in and start providing material that appeals to the new generation. You now have to engage your audience like you’ve never done before. You have to bedazzle them with every ounce of bedazzle that’s in your soul.

So how do you accomplish this? How do we engage and connect with real people?

1. Speak directly to your audience. Be conversation. Don’t write in that boring, college-essay style of writing but rather work to connect with your readers as if you were speaking directly with them.
2. Tell jokes, stories and personal experiences. Let people see the real you. Don’t hide your mistakes and don’t exaggerate your successes. Simply be real with people. Try to make them smile or cry as they read your articles.
3. Be different from everyone else. If you’re writing the same content as everyone else in the world then what incentive does anyone have to visit your site rather than some other site?
4. Shoot from the hip. Infuse your personality into your work. Don’t take on an alter ego when you’re online. Again, be real with people. Be honest. Share yourself.
5. Get excited. Share your passion. It’s alright to use a tone that makes it sound like your jumping around your house out sheer excitement and passion for your subject.

Do you want to engage with people? Do you want to impact the world? Here’s what I’m going to leave you with. John Wesley used to preach to huge crowds. People would travel from all over to hear him speak. When asked what he did to draw in such enormous groups he responded simply, “I set myself on fire and the people come to watch me burn.”

I call that passion.

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Five Magic Keys for Engaging Your Readers

We have come to define success in terms of avoiding failure, but what if we re-defined success in terms of learning from failure and growing thereby? We’ve talked this week at Fuel Your Blogging about success and failure – here’s a re-cap:

• Success Is Just Beyond Reach… Thankfully
• Have You Designed Your Lifestyle for Success Yet?
• How to Profit From Being One of the Pack
• Ten Reasons Your Blog May Be Destined for Failure

Today I’d like to make the scandalous assertion that maybe your blog needs to fail. I mean that in two ways. Perhaps your blog should fail if it doesn’t fit with your bigger purpose and plan. If your blog is getting in the way of what you feel you really need to be doing, then count the cost and decide if you should continue. Life changes sometimes.

But I would also assert that your blog might need to fail sometimes in order to accomplish two great goals. One is to point you in new directions and force you to experiment and get out of your comfort zone. Though the phrase is tired, sometimes you should be forced to think outside the box.

The other point behind failing, however, is that we learn from our mistakes. In the video in this post, I mention two good books I’ve read about failure. Derailed, by Tim Irwin talks about four well-known corporate leaders who were derailed while seemingly at the top of their game. It’s truly one of the most frightening books I’ve ever read in terms of its warning to us to avoid failure.

Tim talks about the matters of authenticity and self-management, humility, and courage. When leaders derail (or bloggers), it’s because we’ve allowed one or more of these characteristics to be compromised in our lives.

The second book, Failing Forward by John Maxwell talks about turning our mistakes into stepping stones that lead us to success. No great leader in history has ever arisen who couldn’t point back to a pivotal mistake from which they learned the hard lessons.

I want to encourage you to examine your blogging, and your entire life for that matter, and ask the question – is failure the end? Or is it just an opportunity to grow? Get started!

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Maybe Your Blog Needs to Fail

A lot of my spare time is spent reading different blogs, I do this to keep up with all of the relevant news to me, the latest opinions and trends, and sometimes just to be a little nosey. Often I see some really great new blogs appearing and I look forward to seeing what they will become, as they grow with content, readers, and contributors, but before you know it they have become stagnant and uncared for.

I believe this is due to the common misunderstanding that a blog will lead to overnight success and take little time to run, when a person is creating a new blog. So if you are in the thinking stages or even early days of creating your own blog, please read the following reasons why your blog may fail and what you can do to ensure its success.

A Lack of Confidence

Having a lack of confidence in your idea or ability has got to be the biggest killer for anything, not just blogs. Before you get started, you must be prepared to except a certain amount of knock backs and rejection. Not everyone will want to read what you have to say, and not everyone will agree with you, but you need to be ready to accept that we are all lucky enough to have our own individual personalities and opinions. If someone leaves you a bad comment, try to accept it as constructive criticism by learning from it.

A Lack of Patience

Accepting that your blog will take time before it becomes a success is also very important, and assuming it will be an overnight success will also be the downfall of your blog. The greatest blogs are those that never intended to be successful, they were created by authors who have a genuine love for their blog topic.

Not Fully Understanding What a Blog Actually Is

There is a massive difference between a blog and a website, but this is also an unknown fact and a major stumbling block for many people. Blog stands for web log, and if you want to create a place which will act as an online diary for your niche subject and you plan to update it frequently, then a blog is the right tool for you. However, if you are wanting to create something much more static and formal, where people can either learn more about your services as a business, or purchase goods from you, then a website would be much better suited.

Not Enjoying Your Niche

You can really tell when someone has a real passion for what they are talking or writing about, and if you do not, well it will come across in the content of your blog posts. If you do not enjoy what you are writing about, you will find it much harder to overcome point one and two from above.

Cluttering Your Blog

This can be a problem which is much harder for you to detect for yourself and avoid. As we blog about our subject we are creating a wealth of information, but it can also be very easy to keep adding little bits here and there to our sidebar when we have enjoyed a certain blog post more than others, or found some really cool news that you believe everyone must know about. Adding too much information to your sidebar can make your blog look untidy and not very user friendly. Stick to a golden rule which I discovered the hard way, by keeping your blog nice and simple.

Unrealistic Traffic Expectations

As I mentioned above, your blog is going to take time and will not be an overnight success. You will not receive boat loads of traffic as soon as you publish your first post, it will take time, commitment, and perseverance before your blog is receiving loads of traffic. Try not to become too down hearted about this, knowing and accepting that your blog is going to take time before it becomes successful is half of your battle won already.

Failure To Highlight Your Best Content

You should really consider placing a list of your most popular blog articles in your sidebar. It is quite common practice to do this and a lot of people will look for this feature when landing on your blog. Allowing people to see what the current buzz is all about on your blog can work really well by diverting people to active blog posts, where they can join in on discussions.

Failure to Know Your Readers

You should analyse your traffic and really get to know your reader, discover what they like reading and what they do not like reading. This is an important time to also mention a key point about your content and who you are writing for. Always remember that you are writing for a human and not a search engine. By trying to make your content overly search engine friendly, you could make it hard to read, drawn out and basically very boring to the average human.

Failing to Get to the Point

There is a famous saying “quality is much greater than quantity” and this saying is also very true when it comes to blogging. By assuming that your blog posts all need to be a mile long, you’ll be prompted to stuff your post with content which is not really needed. Do not beat around the bush, just get straight to that juicy bit of information which you are blogging about.

Failure to Plan

We plan for almost everything we do in our lives in some way or another. Creating a blog is no different and creating your plan should be your starting point, do not just go with the flow and see how this blogging thing turns out. Ask yourself, why are you creating a blog? , What is its purpose?, How do you see your blog developing in the future? Etc. Try to create a short term plan as well as a long term plan, and do not overly worry if your long term plan changes as plans always do.

I hope the reasons above will help you to achieve your dream of becoming a fantastic blogger. The only other thing which could lead you to blogging failure is if you forget to use this blog post and all of its blogging tips!

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Ten Reasons Your Blog May Be Destined for Failure

That’s all great. You might still be a loner, though.

Bloggers tend to forget about the many ways they can interact with the online community. Sometimes that forgetfulness ends up being the detriment of what the bloggers are trying to accomplish. It’s hard to achieve the popularity and acclaim of big-name bloggers you admire if they don’t even know who you are. It’s even harder to get clients from your blogging if you don’t know much about who they are or your competition.

Being a lone wolf sounds appealing – you want to make it on your own, after all, and show you’re independent. You want to climb the latter and not ride on anyone’s coattails. Or maybe you’re just shy, or feel like you shouldn’t ask anyone for anything.

But that lone wolf mentality may not be so attractive after you consider what being part of the pack can do for you. Check out these possibilities:

Get More Clients by Offering More Services

Let’s say your blog offers consulting services. You’ve been consulting for awhile, and you realize that the vast majority of your clients come to you with certain other needs as well. If you do business consulting, for example, it’s pretty likely that nearly all your clients need an accountant. If you’re into marketing, most of your clients will need some design work at some point.

Now, you probably don’t offer those extra-request services, and you don’t have to. What you might consider doing is looking around for another blogger whose work you enjoy, and who offers the services you need.

You know what your clients’ usual price range may be. You know what they need. And you know they’ll want to work with someone they like. If they like you, they’ll probably like the people you like as well. By combining your services with that of another blogger, both of you increase your potential clients – and probably your sales, too.

Get More Eyes on Your Blog with a Joint Venture

There are lots of bloggers with bigger audiences than yours. They enjoy popularity, they get invited to conferences, and they make more money than you do. They’re still just people.

And because they’re busy people, they don’t have a lot of time on their hands to come up with and develop new projects. If you can suggest a joint venture that fits in perfectly with their objectives, it’s very likely that they’ll take you up on it.

What does that do for you? It means that suddenly their audience is your audience.

Those people that hang on this popular blogger’s every word and offer are going to start paying attention to you and your blog. They’re probably going to assume you’re pretty cool, or else this popular blogger wouldn’t be doing a joint venture with you. And they’ll probably look at what you have, because they might want some of it.

They’ll check out your blog. They’ll check out the stuff you have for sale. They’ll check out the services you offer. And if they like what they see, they’ll take you up on it.

Increase Your Visibility as a Guest Blogger

You’ve probably heard that a good way to get more visitors to your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. That’s absolutely true. The trouble with commenting on blogs is that the people who see you are just other commentators. They scroll down to comment and happen to catch what you have to say and click the link to your blog.

A lot of people don’t comment on blogs, though, especially not the bigger ones. Consider that one well-known blog has over a million readers but that any given blog post has only about a hundred commentators. That’s an awful lot of people who are reading and who aren’t commenting!

Start guest posting. A guest post means that hundreds, thousands or even millions of readers read what you have to say. If they like it, they’ll go over to your blog for more of it. How to you get a guest post gig? Ask around. Even the big blogs need good writers to fill in the gaps. They’ll probably ask to see the post first and won’t promise to use it, but that’s a small risk for a very large return on potential new readers.

So there you have three great reasons to stop being a lone wolf and start making blogging friends online. Pick one that suits what you’re looking to accomplish and get going!

About the Author: For more great wolf-pack tips that work, check out James’ blog at Men with Pens. We don’t bite – promise.

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How to Profit from Being One of the Pack

Brandon and I were shooting back and forth about guest post swapping (which I love doing…so of course the answer was YES!), so I asked him to give me a couple of ideas for content for Fuel. When Brandon got back with me on the list…his second option really hit home. So much so…that I haven’t even revealed this completely on my blog. So…right now…I am going to spell it out.

What you mean by “lifestyle design.” I love the way you present this, but it’s original and not seen many other places. Perhaps you could just shoot from the hip and share with Fuel readers what that category means to you and why it’s important.

Thanks for the opportunity…and here is my shot from the hip…

Down deep…we all know this is our one and only life. Down deep…we all know that time is the only thing we really can not control in our lives. Then why do so many people wait until tomorrow? And then when tomorrow comes, so does another excuse. We see it all the time. As people get older, their list of regrets get longer. If only they would have known what they know now…if only they would have started that idea sooner…if only they would have started living instead of getting busy dying.

When it boils down to it, it is our life to make. There are so many people in this world that are victims of circumstances. There was always that boss that just didn’t know what they were really worth. There was always that friend that screwed them over. There was always some outside influence that kept them from their dreams, their goals and that ideal life. Of course…throughout all of those excuses…there is no ownership. Not once do you hear these people say it was their fault they didn’t get their dream.

By taking ownership of both our successes and failures, we take the power to institute change. Being a victim to circumstances is no longer an option as we have taken 100%, complete ownership of our own futures. Do you really want to see the success in life that you dream of late at night? Then it is yours to go out and grab! Word of waring…do not expect an easy road. The greatest successes in life sometimes come through the greatest sacrifice. There is a reason lottery winners go broke. You have to have the pain to appreciate the reward.

For those of you that have read my blog, you already know that I take more of an in your face approach to lifestyle design by putting all of the responsibility on ourselves. What you (and my readers) do not really know…is that I write every single one of those posts for myself. They are my kick in the ass to get going and stop living off of someone else’s rules and stop letting other people in my life determine my self worth. By sharing my thoughts, hopefully I can help others achieve the awareness to make change in their own lives and that is why I share them on my blog. No matter how successful, no matter how independent, no matter how many goals you have achieved in your life, you are always susceptible to giving into the excuses and self doubt. You need a constant reminder to not live that way and to continue creating the life of your dreams.

I started blogging to be a part of something bigger and to write my own ticket in life. In turn, blogging saves me from dropping into bad habits of self doubt and believing negative outside influences. Blogging gives me freedom and life through words.

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Have You Designed Your Lifestyle for Success Yet?

Scrat’s plight reminds me of the chase for success. Some people are content to simply survive, but in some of us, there is an intense desire for more than survival – we want to be successful and significant. But as John Maxwell says, “Success is a moving target!”

When it comes to the blogging industry, success has a variety of definitions. We measure it in terms of traffic, followers, subscribers and readers, or income and revenue. Personally, I define success in blogging more in terms of reach or influence than dollars and pageviews, but no matter how you define success, it’s always a little bit elusive. It remains just beyond reach, like Scrat’s acorn.

The bittersweet truth about this moving target of success is that we will never quite arrive. We talk about the “pinnacle” of success, but I don’t believe any pinnacle exists. We’re always on a continuous journey. There are always better articles to write, new readers to reach, more connections to be made, and more conversations to be had.

It’s bitter in that it keeps us chasing, often exhausted in our pursuit of a target never quite achievable. But it’s sweet in that this elusiveness is what keeps us chasing, and it’s the chase that defines us.

Over the next few days you’ll see several posts here at Fuel Your Blogging about the subjects of success and failure from some talented guest authors. I simply want to challenge you to keep chasing. Keep reading, studying, connecting, writing, trying, improving, and reaching for the ever-elusive pinnacle of success.

lancehankins

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Success Is Just Beyond Reach… Thankfully

The marriage of micro-blogging and video has produced micro-vlogging, a trend in its infancy perhaps, but some believe it’s a growing platform for the future of online publishing.

Jen Hinton is a lifecaster who enjoys sharing video blogs on her introspective blog Keep It Classy, hosts an online radio show called Chicks Who Chat, and is currently doing a 365 Vlog Project on her YouTube channel. She shared her thoughts about micro-vlogging with us…

We all know that micro-blogging has literally exploded within the past couple of years, but what if we took it a step further?…

Vlogging is the next big leap we will all make in the blogosphere in my opinion. Some people are still very scared of the idea but we should ask ourselves why? We share our every move through social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and our blogs… I always wonder though who the person behind the blog is. I can only imagine what you look like and the true sound of your voice. If I am reading your blog on a regular basis then the likelihood is that I am interested in your world.

Micro-vlogging is basically twitterizing (love that word) your videos; giving only a brief snippet of yourself on video. There are great platforms out there like 12seconds, TwitVid, and BubbleTweet (my personal fave) that allow you to micro-vlog with a user friendly platform. The reason that micro-vlogging is the next big thing is because people do not have a lot of time. They hop online during their brief lunch break or when they sneak away from their kids throughout the day. It’s quick and easy. So give it a shot!

For anyone ready to give micro-vlogging a decent shot, here are ten platforms worth checking out:

12seconds.tv

Bubble Tweet

TwitVid

Robo.to

Twiddeo

TweeTube.com

Twitcam

Camtweet

TwitC

TwitLens

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Just Shoot Yourself and Vlog About It

Video blogging (or vlogging if you prefer) has started to become all the rage. Bandwidth limits are increasing. Unlimited server space is available. Video sharing websites are popping up all over the internet with YouTube leading the charge. Are you missing out at a golden opportunity to stand out amongst the pack by creating video posts? Why haven’t you started yet?

The two most common reasons why bloggers are reluctant to make the foray into video:

“I get very nervous in front of the camera.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to forget what to say.”

It’s natural that this would be the case, we’re all not born performers – but you can eliminate both of these fears with a simple memorization technique. Let me teach you how.

Before we start though, you first need to do the unimaginable. Jump off the cliff and ditch the script!

Speaking naturally and appearing confident comes from having knowledge of the subject at hand. As long as you have this, a word-for-word script is uneccessary. When you speak to others in your everyday lives, do you read your thoughts from a piece of paper? Of course not. Treat your video post in the same regard – like you’re talking normally to another person.

Ok, I see you’re getting nervous. You’re probably wondering “if I don’t have a script, how will I remember what to say?”

This is simple. It takes only three steps:

1. Speak your thoughts out loud to yourself.. Write them down, not with full sentences, but with key words and phrases. Continue doing so until you believe you’ve hit every point you’d like to make in your video.

2. Create an outline that organizes these phrases in the best chronological order. Eliminate any words that are uneccessary in helping you remember the original thought. Try to narrow this outline down as much as possible.

3. Take a look at this ordered list of words and phrases. While doing so, speak your thoughts as you did previously. Do this again and again until you can simply look at that single word on the paper and remember the thought that represents it.

If you’ve put enough effort into this process, you have now successfully condensed a wealth of information into as little amount of data as possible. In addition, since a pre-written script was never produced, you will seem quite natural on camera and not appear to be reading or reciting words from a page. Pin the list next to your webcam and record away!

Practicing this method over time will make anything easier to memorize. You’ll go from one or two minute video posts to ditching the ordered list altogether and being able to remember half-hour long presentations in a snap.

Don’t be afraid to do video posts anymore! Quash your fears about your confidence and memory. Just remember the three steps above and you’ll do just fine. Oh, do you need help memorizing them? Well…

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How To Memorize Anything and Make Great Video Posts

We’re spending a bit of time this week talking about video blogging (or “vlogging,” though I’m not a fan of that word). There are a plethora of tools at our disposal, but a few seem to rise above the crowd and offer the best experience for sharing video content on the web. Aside from self-hosted video, the five most popular platforms, according to Mefeedia’s State of the Vlogosphere, are:

• Youtube (36%)
• Blip.tv (14%)
• Vimeo (9%)
• MySpace (7%)
• Daily Motion (3%)

Many professional vloggers choose to utilize multiple channels to draw more viewers and each platform offers up its own inherent advantages and disadvantages. We wanted to ask you, our readers, which you’ve found to be most useful, powerful, or productive? What’s your favorite and why would you recommend it?

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Spill It: What’s the Best Platform for Vlogging?