As hard as this is to admit, my blog should probably be a fair amount bigger than it is.
Maybe that sounds arrogant, but when you think about the fact that I’ve been working on it for nearly a year and a half, have had some incredible adventures to write about, and have built a substantial network of contacts and friends, those factors combined should equal a few more subscribers than I’m at currently.
However the reason I’m not there is completely my fault and no one else’s.
You look at people like Corbett Barr, who’s recent endeavor Think Traffic has more subscribers in 2 months than I’ve had in 15. It’s only a matter of time before Colin Wright gets a book deal. And don’t even get me started on the true A-listers that are really killing it. Guillebeau, I’m lookin’ at you!
Last week I crossed over 1,000 Feedburner subscribers for the first time. While that’s a huge accomplishment, and one that many blogs will never get to, I couldn’t help but think that I should be farther along. It isn’t that I don’t know how to increase my readership or subscriber base. Rather it’s that I’ve prioritized other activities above it – which I have mixed feelings about.
Today for instance, after working in the morning I spent the afternoon shooting photos in the Columbia River Gorge. It was a beautiful day and I got some good shots, but the fact remains, I have yet to “make it” – far from it actually. So until I do, part of me feels guilty when I take free time to have fun, rather than work on my business ventures and blog building.
Bridal Veil Falls in the Columbia River Gorge
Side note: The other part of me doesn’t feel bad at all and loves that fact that I’ve spent so much of the last year actually living life, rather than just writing about it.
After thinking about this, I’ve come up with a list of 10 things that have kept me from taking this blog to the next level and really making my mark on the blog community. For those of you starting out (and even those who’ve been blogging for awhile), focusing on each of these ten things will lead to some incredible blog growth.
So here you go, ten ways to NOT build a blog:
1) Fail to Respond to Comments. This is huge, and for such a simple thing I apparently have a tough time doing it. I’ve brought up my lack of commenting in the past, and each time I try and fix it I do a pretty crappy job. A few months ago I had really high user interaction and was averaging around 30 comments a post. Now it’s about half that. Hmmm, maybe if I’d actually respond you guys wouldn’t have stopped writing!
If you want to keep people coming back and attracting new readers, the easiest way is to make yourself accessible and communicate back when they reach out to you.
2) Don’t pursue guest posts. From the very beginning of my blogging career I’ve had numerous people tell me the biggest way to grow your blog is to pursue guest posts from sites that are bigger than you. Sure enough, BY FAR the two biggest days (weeks) of traffic have been ones where I’ve guest posted at major sites. Sure these posts take a little bit longer to write, but the excitement for getting your name out there more than makes up for the extra time. Why I haven’t been working my ass off to write for every major blog on the internet is beyond me. Do this, and you’ll be amazed at the results.
3) Don’t stick to a strict posting schedule. For awhile I was really good at sticking to the Monday and Thursday arrangement we laid out some months ago. Somewhere along the way I let other stuff get in the way of that. Big, big mistake. Once you miss one posting date, it gets way to easy to miss another, aaaand another. Don’t do it. Create a schedule, stick to it.
4) Talk about launching a product for months – but never actually launch it. How long have I been talking about Overcoming the Fear of Uncertainty? Way too long, that’s how long. It really is coming soon, but if I were smart I would have had this thing 99% done before even mentioning it. Then I’d promote the hell out of it and give you exactly what I said I would, when I said I would. Not so much the case. Well you live and learn, I’ll do better next time – I’ve just gotta finish this one first!
5) Fail to optimize your mailing list. I waited way too long for coughing up the 19 bucks a month for Aweber. I don’t want to admit this, but I’ve sent out three newsletters since starting the list a few months back. Granted, I was pretty proud of the writing, but I should be communicating with those of you that have really shown your support much more often (without being annoying). And this is one that I really am making an effort to do. But seriously people, if you have readers that sign up for your newsletter or mailing list, GIVE THEM SOMETHING GOOD!
If you’re on my list, expect something good soon. I already offered a free ebook, which has since been expanded upon, but I’ll do even better next time around.
6) Twitter suckage (and Facebook too). Don’t even get me started with this one. Everyday I sit and watch people totally kill it on Twitter. Engaging others, tweeting cool stuff, and generally being helpful. I’ve done a really poor job with this, and while I try and be interesting, I don’t engage nearly enough. I should @ reply every single person I follow. Hmmm, that’d be a good project. I’ll keep you posted on that one.
7) Lack of engagement. Between the lack of comments and slow email response, I could be a lot better with one on one engagement with my audience. I’m convinced its ADD that keeps me from doing this, because I honestly want to talk to every single one of you, and yet I can still be slow with responses. If you want to successfully build your blog, respond to every single person who emails you, and do so genuinely and in a timely manner.
8) Don’t Think About Your Audience. A lot of times I tend to just kind of write about whatever I want. Frequently I don’t take the time think about writing content that’s Re-tweetable, viral, and generally just useful. I should talk less about myself and more about what I’ve learned so that you can follow in my footsteps or run as far away from me as possible (depending on what your goals are).
9) Manage Your Time Poorly. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve put hundreds if not thousands of hours into this blog. But each of the points above are examples of things I could (should) have done better over the last year. It isn’t even a matter of putting hours in, much of it comes down to just being effective with the time you spend (ie STOP CHECKING STATS!).
Create a plan for how you are going to spend your time each day, and don’t reward yourself until your goals have been met. (Thanks to Benny Lewis for that one which he reminded me off yesterday)!
And now for one of the best ways I’ve found to create a successful blog, ready for this?
DO SOMETHING COOL.
People love reading about adventures, doing stuff out of the ordinary, and generally people like seeing others do stuff they love. Many of you could care less about my thoughts on blogging or business building, you just follow the blog because I went to Thailand and have been living an adventurous life.
But your version of “cool” doesn’t need to be nearly so dramatic. Anyone could go spend an afternoon in their home town doing something worth reading about, you just have to make a conscious effort to do it. So often we get wrapped up in the day to day of our work life that we forget to do fun stuff.
So thats it, make an effort with your blog this week, and then go do something cool and write about it – I promise you’ll like the results.
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Do Something Cool.
Not only a good suggestion for building a good blog, but living a good life. one of the things, that I’ve liked about my blogging adventure so far is that it keeps pushing me to do things I’ve never done before and may not have ever done without the blog.
I’m guilty of all 9, but I’m repenting
I’ll get better I promise!
Hey Sean,
Came across your site via Joel over @ Blog of Impossible Things. Thanks for the practicality and realness of this article. I’m going to take these things to heart & NOT put them into practice!
Ok, so…I’m sucking at a lot of these too. LOL…cry. Thankfully, I feel like I’m getting some of the right.
I really like your idea of @ replying to everyone you follow. THAT would be an awesome project. I have a feeling it might take a few days to do so, but I might just consider doing that. I’ll keep you posted on the progress. You’ll know when I’m doing it…since you’ll be getting a @ reply yourself.
Sean -
Great topic and just what I needed to see this morning. Although I am fairly new to the blogging world (more of a design guy), I already have fallen into most of these traps you outlined with my own blog. Thanks for the reminder.
Now let’s see how long it takes for you to respond to these comments. Haha.
Great stuff as always.
Sean congrats on ur subscriber milestone!
I love visiting blogs where the owner responds to readers. Why do u think you haven’t been as responsive besides work?
Best of luck in your endeavors!
@Joel I added that in at the end this morning, it was originally going to be 10 reasons not to start a blog, then I realized I hadn’t been bad at EVERYTHING. But its so true, often we forget to just go out and do cool stuff, so this served as a reminder not only to the readers here, but to myself to keep doing the stuff that makes you happy.
@Nichole Glad to see you made it over! Joel’s site is awesome btw. One of the things youll find about Location 180 is that I try and be as honest as possible. Sometimes that means showing the world how far from perfect I really am, as was the case in this article. But nevertheless I hope you found some value.
@David don’t think any of us are bad at these ALL of the time, its just a matter of consciously trying to improve your endeavor. I was actually pretty serious about @replying everyone that I follow. I think that it would be a really good experiment, so we’ll see what happens!
@Dustin If you can stay out of these traps early on, you’ll be way better off. Sure you can always improve later on (like I’m trying to do now), but having good habits from the beginning is really invaluable. Some of the people with bigger blogs will certainly attest to that.
@FS Thanks man, as much as it sounds like I was complaining about it in this post, I really am excited to have finally gotten over that hump! I think part of it is a poor comment system. I need to make it easier for people to interact. Threaded comments and a better way to subscribe would help me a lot to try and facilitate better conversations. However I think the main reason is that I tend to write a post and move on to the next thing almost immediately. I need to remember that just because a post goes live, the work (not that its really work) doesn’t end there!
Thanks for the kind words, brother!
Great post, and a lot of great reminders. And I agree, you SHOULD have more subscribers (because you do good work), but at the same time, the fact that you’re out there and living instead of sitting at the computer and optimizing/tweeting/LOLing all the time speaks volumes for your dedication to LIFE, and that is much more important (and will actually result in more subscribers when you decide to cash in on it).
Numbers are just that: numbers. At the end of the day they’re meaningless. What isn’t meaningless is doing what you enjoy, surrounding yourself with wonderful people and having a sounding board for your ideas. If you’re achieving those ends, then the blog is more than serving its purpose.
@Colin And thank you for the kind words. As much as I love this blog, I agree that doing the stuff I enjoy and spending time with great people is really what is most important. While the numbers may not be quite where I’d like them to be, I know that its because I AM living life that I actually have a bit of credibility. I’m no longer one of those guys that writes about stuff from his cubicle all day and doesn’t actually have anything real to show for it haha.
Still bummed we werent able to get together while you were in PDX. At the very least we should skype before you take off for Thailand…
Sean,
Thank you for this. I have been needing help with my blog and this certainly lead me in the right direction!
- Mary
@Mary Glad someone found some use out of it. Your blog is one of the most well written I follow, so I hope you keep it up!
Woah woah woah! Just what I needed!
Doing something cool.
@ Replying everyone you follow.
Sticking to a strict schedule.
Those are the big three that you just virtually smacked me in the head with. I’ve never hurt so good!
Thanks for sharing Sean. This is great stuff! Gonna email it to a few newcomer friends of mine!
- Josh
@Josh Yeah I really like the @reply idea. I didnt even put much serious thought into until after the post went live, and was like wait a second, that IS a good idea. So I’m going to do it next week and write about it soon. I look forward to your message!
@Ruben I think sticking to a schedule is one that will vary from person to person. For me to stick to a two post a week schedule should be extremely do-able. If I cant do that, then personally, I’ve got bigger problems. Other people may not want the pressure associated with doing that, but I think that accountability can be an important thing. I also think readers tend to keep coming back when they know for sure there will be a post. I’m like that with Guillebeau’s blog. If there is one sure thing in the world, its that he will have a post on Mondays and Thursdays haha.
My personal thoughts on accountability: http://www.seanogle.com/headline/consequences-are-everything
@Nailah I dont know if I would go as far to say that you have to treat your blog as a full time job to see it grow, you just have to establish some sort of plan and goals and stick to it. That could be 4 hours a week or 40, but either way its going to lead to growth.
@Jonny At least its growing! Hopefully it will start growing a little bit quicker now that I’ve established for myself what needs to be done…
@Gary Whoa, you bring up a lot of good points! haha, lets see if I can identify some of those. First off, as for the post-adventure blues, I actually have stayed away from that quite a bit. I’ve been loving life in Portland and really enjoying everything going on. Also now that I’ve got this upcoming trip across the US, I feel as though there is a new adventure right around the corner. So I’m not too worried about that.
Peer comparison. Thats one that I definitely do struggle with. However not comparison from other people, but rather my own internal comparsions to my peers. There are a lot of people who’ve done a much better job building their blogs than I have, and there is definitely a little bit of envy. But thats my own fault. I actually was debating between writing this post or another one called “Comparison Kills” – maybe next week.
I do think I may have found myself in a bit of a dip phase, but I also am confident that I’m working my way out of it. Pretty stoked about upcoming projects!
@Lach I was actually going to say “do epic shit” exactly until I realized my grandma reads my blog, and that I could probably phrase it in a nicer way and still get the point across haha. Its true though, as long as you keep doing cool shit, life is going to be good. Sure you’ve gotta find a way to support yourself, but if you’re serious about living an awesome life, you’ll find a way to do it. Also, you can count on some more responses from here on out, appreciate you sticking around
@Patrick Its all about figuring out what works for you – itll be different for everyone. This post was a way to not only help others who may be struggling, but to also clarify in my own head what needs to be done.
@Rob There’s certainly something to be said for making your own mistakes and learning from them. It helps to put things in perspective, and like you said, will lead to increased success later on!
Thanks everyone for the comments, you guys seriously are what makes this community as great as it is. You rock.
I mostly agree with your ideas… Except for the “stick to a strict schedule”. Every time I pick a schedule, it ends badly: pressure, worse quality.
I have a mild schedule, in that I try to post every 2 or 3 days, but I can get 4 or 5 if at the end comes a good post. For example, I didn’t have a post for today but had several in line, thus I just went to my drafts folder and dusted off one I had in line (I wrote this in May to document something that is no longer that interesting, but anyway).
I prefer to have just a commitment, but no schedule. To post often enough to entertain your readers, but not that often that they get bored.
Ruben
This post totally hit home. I am SO guilty of several of those 9 offenses. I know that if I want my blog to grow and be successful I need to work hard at it and treat it like a full-time job. Thanks for the reminder!
Very good points and in fairness I am shocked you don’t have more than 1000 subscribers.
What’s this Sean – you’re human after-all? ! Should-Woulda-Coulda are persistent lizard brain merry-go round thoughts. They’re no friends of anyone, let ‘em go!
Might I suggest perhaps there’s a hint of post-adventure travel blues, unfair peer comparison and harsh self-criticism in your words.
Fear not though, for this ‘Dip’ phase [credit Seth Godin] will pass. And away you’ll go again onto the next level of creation.
Regardless, ponder the words etched hear the entrance to the Life Savers’ Lookout Pavilion on Australia’s Bondi Beach:
Hey Sean. This all sounds like good advice, but if you can only manage to get 1 out of 10 things right most of the time, I think you nailed the big one: “do epic shit” as I one heard it articulated
That will get you far.
Also, you should never feel guilty for enjoying yourself before you’ve accomplished all your goals. Overworking is a great way to make sure you loose sight of them. I’ve noticed a pattern in my own behaviour that goes something like this: 1. do a lot of internal ‘mindset’ work and get inspired to act 2. act 3. work at it to the point of burnout 4. loose sight of the goal or become demoralised, repeat. Now I’m making changes so I spend more time in step 1 and 2 and skip the others.
FWIW, I post comments on your blog because I feel a resonance with what you’re doing and I’m interested in a dialogue. For me, the whole point of even reading blogs is so you can connect with amazing people. So, yeah, respond =)
Hey, the first step is realizing we all have a problem, right?
Domination doesn’t come easy, and it has no single path either. I like to think of your list as a way I can focus on a particular area of my blog for a set time, finding what works for me as well as for my audience. Thanks Sean!
All good tips, but like everything in life, the best way is to do all of these, make the mistakes and learn from them.
It’s like saying ‘don’t go into debt’. Everyone who is remotely fun or aspiring will do it, and although obeying the rules all the time will get your further (whatever the goal), I think people who make these mistakes early end up progressing further in the long run.
So anyone feeling guilty reading this: don’t! Just accept it and make the changes
As I was going down your list, I realized I’m guilty of just about everything you wrote, to some degree. I think all bloggers, especially the ones who take it seriously, are well aware of the areas where they can spend more time, BUT….
…us travel bloggers (or lifestyle designers if you will) have already made the decision to value living life to the fullest over just about anything else.
I’d much rather have a balanced life and a slower growing blog, than to be living in my chosen city of Medellin, Colombia working 24/7 to make more money with product development and launches! I’d mine as well be back working in a cubicle for a large corporation in that case.
For me, this whole (travel blogging, work for myself) adventure is about living a balanced life.
PS – by balanced life, I mean being able to sleep late every day.
Great list. I particularily like “do something cool”.
At the end of the day, it’s all about the stories and the content. I read countless posts everyday, but the ones that stick out are often because it was about “something cool”. These are the people I want to follow and check back in with.
Cheers!
@Cam I’ve been trying to base my entire life around the idea of “doing something cool”. When I think of my life 20 years down the road, I’d much rather have 20 years of awesome adventures, than 20 stories about how I took a yearly week long vacations to Hawaii during my time off.
@Dave Thats a really good point. No one is going to be good at all of these things all the time, but the most successful people are aware of their faults and act in the way they see fit. I’m with you, I will sacrifice fast growth to have some more fun while I’m at it. I don’t need to be a millionaire tomorrow, as long as I’m continuing to make progress towards my goals, and having a good time while I’m doing it, all is good in my world. Thanks for the comment!
Sean,
First off, great to finally chat with you the other day. Look forward to meeting you in person. I can relate to what you are talking about. It took me a long time to get to 1000 subscribers and as far as product launches, I’ve been like you, delaying it constantly.
There’s alot of excuses people make for not launching, but I think you have to just set to the goal to do it, and take a little bit of action towards it each day. If you say I have to create this massive product and you only see the millions of tasks that lie ahead you’ll never do it. If you do just a little bit each day, then it will happen.
I sucked at Twitter myself, and now I finally kind of understand it and how to engage people on it. Truthfully, understanding how interact with people on twitter will make your traffic grow faster than you can possibly imagine. And it doesn’t take some person with milions of followers to make your ideas spread. It takes true authentic connections with about 50 people to really start the snowball. Here’s my link to the post about that concept I told you about :
http://theskooloflife.com/wordpress/the-inner-circle-the-rule-of-150-and-your-tipping-point/
Hey man, I agree with some of the others this post was a brick to my forehead. Man I need to focus and do some things a little different. I hope I can fix some of these things. I am not doing so hot right now. Huh, this can be discouraging or it can be inspiring. I think I will make it the latter. I can do this. I am actually beginning to get excited about what some of these things can offer for what I am going after. Thanks man.
talk to you soon brother.
Thanks for the nice kick in the butt. I’ve been talking about some of these things for a while, but it’s easy to put off and push out for some time in the future. I’m not advocating becoming a slave to your blog, but you’ve pointed out some ways to engage and interact better with community and who knows what opportunities will come from that.
My husband and I tend to look at “do something cool” as regret avoidance. Everyone thought we were crazy to leave San Francisco and then 5 years later we were crazy to leave our stable lives in Prague to travel the world. We knew 5-10-15 years could go by so quickly in Prague and we didn’t want to look back and think “what if we had traveled around the world?”
Good stuff man. If you install a threading plug in, which would allow me to respond right under your comment, I think that will help.
When you coming back to Amerikah?
@FS A threading plugin is LONG overdue. Look for that in the next week. I actually got back to PDX last month, been a good summer so far!
@Audrey Couldnt agree more. I could have easily stayed in may comfortable job in Portland and made a lot of money. The problem is, I would have way too many regrets because of it, and no one wants that. You also bring up a good point about not being a slave to your blog, its an easy trap to fall into, and you have to realize that for as many possibilities as a blog can open up for you, its still more important to actually be doing stuff, rather than just writing about it.
@Vinay Yeah thats too bad! They did it around the same time last year, so I imagine they might do it again next year depending on how it goes?
@Timothy There is so much information out there that can be taken as either inspiring our discouraging. The more you can lean towards the former the better of you’ll be. Good luck implementing some of these ideas and thanks for the comment!
@Srini Great to talk to you as well and really hope to meet up next month! I think your idea about really connecting with 50 people is a valuable one. The more people you can engage with in the right way, the more useful the tool is going to be for you.
Hi Sean!
I just discovered your blog and I like it a lot!
This article will be useful for me in my attempt to build a successful blog!
I’ll try to stop checking my stats 10 times/day!
Hubert
I also agree that you should have a bigger following. It seems like everyone is talking about you (in a good way of course) so you’ve probably hit that critical mass of recognition and so mass success is an inevitability at this point assuming you don’t pull a disappearing act.
I see that you already have started to improve things
Good list and being somebody that is ‘out there’ 24/7, I make teh same mistakes. I have hundreds of stories and thousands of pictures ready to be shared on my bike blog or on my separate photoblog ExposedPlanet, which as not seen an pdate in over a year (though I am working on it. Really!).
Won’t do much good if they are just in my head or on my harddrive..
Still it is difficul to juggle time, sometimes is is nice to check stats, if only to think about your points above again!
Thanks, cheers from the road (currently Peru)
Wow – you nailed me with the “strict posting schedule” bullet. I have a really hard time with schedules since I had a baby recently. Thanks for the advice – I have been seeking out a post like this, as bloggers don’t seem to talk about blogging enough (in a constructive way).
JSJ
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