Lessons learned in my blogging years

Lessons learned in my blogging years

There are incredible lessons to be learned from the blogging world. The creative outlet alone is transforming, but compared to the benefits of interaction, communing with people who teach you something every day and simply immersing yourself in a world filled with whatever tickles your fancy, is still beautiful to me.

What I'm about to say might make you think that my sole purpose is to bash the "experts" out there… but alas, it is not. I admire their drive to help and come up with more techniques every day - but as much as I validate their opinion, I analyze blogs and meet people that break all the molds and standards - and have a successful career following one rule alone: Being themselves.

Let’s get started with 5 basic lessons everyone in the blogging world is bound to learn at some point.

1. I’ve learned that as amazing as the blogging world is to me, when you tell someone "I'm a blogger", you won't get cheers and pats of the back in return. Most likely they will either ask you to give more details or exhale a suspicious "hmmm". I couldn’t really wrap my head around the unlikelihood of a congratulatory response, but as I progressed, I realized that Blogging seems extremely easy to the “outsider” and it is actually our own fault in making it look as if it were a get-rich-quick affair. Whenever someone asks what I do for a living, I say, "I'm a struggling Blogger" - because that's what I really am at the best of times.



2. I learned that the most basic rule in staying afloat is to understand that Blogging is human-interaction 101. Learning to behave in the blogging world is like learning to behave in the normal world - and you already know how to do that. People are people and their reactions will be the same in whatever space or circumstance. You will get bad comments, and at some point you will experience rejection with a side order of trash-talk. No blog survives without interaction and I'm actually happy that it is like that. People are likely to read your blog if they can relate to you on some level. Your readers will always create a connection to you, just as in life itself you want to be able to form bonds and maintain standards. This is the lesson that deters me from buying everything that's written about making it in the blogging world. There's no one formula that will make you excel in human interaction. A healthy dose of respect is a good start. I take criticism depending on its source. I believe that someone who is being constructive will write you an email to confront you - not leave a few "F-words” in your comment section under "anonymous".

3. One more lesson I've learned is that people who specialize in the domain of blogging will give you an unnecessary list of 1100 tools and must-do’s to survive. Surprisingly enough, I didn't learn this lesson until I was struggling with the decision of closing down my previous blog last year; Many times, posts that you think are meant to be to your advantage in terms of playing the SEO game, are really a case of “two steps forward and one step back”. Does this really help your readers and make them want to jump in with both feet? Now, if an "expert" tells me that to achieve greatness I have to sign up with 30 social media sites or spam everyone with links to my posts, I follow my gut. That little one never fails.

4. I’ve learned that most of us share the best parts of our lives. I say this because this is an issue with little, big and A-list bloggers. People want to “show their best side” on their blogs for several reasons: Some want to be of inspiration to you, while others just want to look good (and if you are not careful, this alone could put an enormous burden on your shoulders). I've always said this and I will never stop: Blogs create the perfect atmosphere for you to live a daydream type of life, but it is imperative that you also learn to enjoy your own life in the present and be ok with your circumstances. With this I'm not saying you should not want to have or be more… but rather to be happy on and offline. Thankfully, I don't crave what everyone else has or want to live their lives, because I’ve learned that we ALL have problems and we ALL have moments of suffering and growing pains. What I have learned is to come from an honest place. It mortifies me to think that someone thinks my life is easy or that I'm a super mom (more than it worries me that someone actually thinks the opposite!).

5. In closing my first 5 lessons - I’ve learned that it is not all about the statistics. Most of us when we blog look at the overall statistics to measure success: how many comments you get, how many hits, how many requests or emails, etc. Funny enough I didn't learn my lesson until the day I started receiving over 100 emails a day and a tons of hits. Everything I had wished for seemed to be an anti-climax. Then I understood that the number of comments you receive is not always a good measuring stick for success. People, especially those who actively participate in your blog, are not hits or statistics - they are people, giving you their undivided attention for at least the time that it takes them to read your post. If you think about it, it’s actually very liberating to realize that your measure of success should be established first of all by you.

The most important question follows… What have YOU learned?