On my five year blog anniversary (on this domain and a few of weeks after launching my very first course), I can’t help but think about how far I have come and how excited I am for some of the goals I am setting my sights on. I’m even hungrier to blog than on day 1 because I have seen firsthand the huge impact it’s had on my life.
I say often that Twitter changed my life. That’s not an exaggeration or hyperbole by any stretch of the imagination. Twitter has played a huge impact on my life. I have landed jobs from Twitter, met awesome business contacts, and made some lifelong, amazing friends from initial conversations on this site.
But if I am even more honest with myself, blogging played an even bigger role than Twitter. And all the lessons it taught me.
Starting to write this blog made me realize that writing great content was only the beginning. Just because you write great content doesn’t mean people will read it. You have to write it, then build tons of relationships and promote the crap out of it, and then people might come. It’s the same principles as building in online community. That’s a lesson that took me well over a year to learn with this blog.
Looking back, I’m so embarrassed by the vast majority of my first few dozen posts.
What makes a great blog isn’t just the content the blogger shares. It’s about RELATIONSHIPS. It’s about the community the blogger has created around their brand.
It was a slow, often painful process, but I slowly started to find my own voice. My whole POV of my blog started to change when I started treating my blog more like the communities I managed day in and day out professionally. What makes a great blog isn’t just the content the blogger shares. It’s about RELATIONSHIPS. It’s about the community the blogger has created around their brand.
A blog is absolutely a brand in itself. You nurture that community when it’s still small by building relationships 1:1. It’s about building relationships with your audience, other bloggers, influencers in your niche, and so on.
It’s about opening up and sharing a piece of yourself with your readers every time you hit publish. It’s about being real, honest and vulnerable. It’s about listening to your readers – even if it’s only 1 or 2 at the start- more than you write. Then, strengthening those connections through whatever means you can – be it social media, blog comments, video chatting and in person. It’s the emphasis on building real relationships with your readers that will grow your blog from a handful of readers to hundreds or thousands.
When I look at the blogs that most inspire me, the ones that i fully participate and come back to month after month, year after year, it’s because the author(s) really takes the time to build relationships with their readers. Just a few of my long-standing favorites are: Jess Lawlor, Erika Napoletano, Mack Collier, Paul Jarvis among many, many others.
Whether you are just thinking about starting your first blog or an old pro, I challenge you to think about blogging in the same way that you connect with others and build real relationships. Regardless of if it’s a business, lifestyle or a personal blog, if you strip away all the content and metrics, the real consistent every blog has left is people. It’s the relationships you build with your readers that can take your crazy, little blog idea from relative obscurity to something much bigger than you could even imagine.