There’s a lot of disinformation and misinformation online about blogs. Blogs are distrusted because they’re tagged as oddball “online diaries” on the one hand, and on the other hand, they’re touted as the expressway route to instant traffic for a Web site.
However, you can’t generalize about blogs, there are too many millions of them.
This “what’s a blog?” confusion makes new bloggers nervous. They worry about what a bog REALLY is, and how they can conform to proper blogging standards. They worry about who’ll read their blog. Or that no one will read it. I get questions about whether a blogger can talk about his hobbies and his family and whether it’s OK to promote products, and –
My response is always more or less the same: “A blog is just a Web site. What do you want your site to do? RELAX. You can put anything you like on it, it’s your blog. Even when you know what you want your blog to do, your ideas can change. Give it 12 months.”
Your blog is a Web site: it takes time to grow
Look on the first 12 months of any blog as that blog’s startup phase.
In the 12 months you may:
* Change the blog’s title;
* Change your blog’s goals (purpose), and target a different audience;
* Drop the blog entirely;
* Take the blog in a completely new direction.
It takes around three months for you to find your “voice” for your blog. “Voice” is the style of writing for that blog, and it develops from your attitudes. Your voice is a NATURAL development. You can’t push it. If you try to develop a voice which doesn’t come straight from your mind and heart, the blog’s voice will be fake. This is amazingly easy to discern. Think about it: when you read an email message, you can tell a lot about the person’s state of mind from 100 words. Those 100 words have subtext.
Your voice is your blog’s subtext, and you can’t fake it.
When you find your voice for that blog, you will become a lot more confident. But it takes around 12 months for you (and others) to see your blog as an established entity.
Technorati Tags: blog how-to, blog-entrepreneur, blogger-for-hire, make money blogging
You must log in to post a comment.