Some myths about blogging shattered

This is a repost from the Internet Archive, details at the end of the post.

If you are new to the world of blogging, there are few pieces of advice that you can never, ever escape.

The sad thing is the most of them are utter non sense – huge time wasters. In fact, if you are spending time following them, you are doing your blog a great injustice – and to yourself as well.

And because you don’t get to see results of any kind, you are bound to feel like throwing in the towel – once and for all.

Here are few of my top favourites.

1. Post Daily

Not when you are starting out.

There is no point is spending hours on creating content when nobody’s looking -nobody’s reading.

Also remember you are learning yourself in the early days; you are bound to make mistakes. You need to spend more time educating yourself about all aspects of blogging; design, content, promotion, marketing, SEO, basic technical stuff etc, instead of freaking out about creating content on a daily basis.

Spend 30% of your time writing posts; even twice a week is good. Spend the rest of the time learning about what it takes to write a successful blog, connecting with other bloggers in your niche and writing guest posts.

The correct advice: Post regularly, doing the best you can. Keep to a schedule so people know what to expect. Spend your energies on educating yourself.

2. Content is King

If you are new, this is what you believe right?

If you have been there, done that, you know this is simply not true, at least not when done in isolation, not in the beginning anyway.

It doesn’t matter how good you are as a writer, how many blogging talents you possess, people simply won’t read your content because they can’t find it.

On top of it, you are not the only talented one you know, there are hundreds, no thousands of genius bloggers are looking for attention.

Blogosphere is changed. In the beginning there were few talented bloggers, now there are many. There is a huge supply and the only way to stand out is by making connections with bloggers – by networking, by guest posting.

Only when you have allies in the blogging world, when they start spreading the word about you, people will start taking notice. They will help promote your content, like it, tweet it, link to it.

And once you have established yourself, you can relax and focus on your content only. Then it will be the right time to invest allyour energies in your content.

3. Comment on other blogs to drive traffic to your blog

Ahh – this ons is by far the most misunderstood piece of advice there is. And I am guilty of doing the same.

You see, when my blog was new, I was given this advice and so I dutifully commented – a lot.

Except, I somehow made the comment about my blog, and my writing. The worst part was that I didn’t even realize it.

I thought, here is my chance of getting discovered, the blogger will notice me and my writing, and get in touch me to personally let me know how my content has wowed them. Guess what, doesn’t happen.

Unless, the comment is on their content. Then it will catch their eye.

On the other hand, you might be writing thinking that your comments will catch interest of other commentators and they will flock to your blog to find who this amazing blogger is.

Wrong again.

Most commentators don’t have the time to read all the comments anyway, do you?

And if you are commenting on blogs for these two reasons, you are going it the wrong way anyway.

• Comment on posts where you genuinely things to add, where you feel that input is really useful. Forget about the notion that you are doing this to drive traffic.
• Comment with the idea that you are commenting for the blogger. Be detailed in your comments if you can. Treat your comments as mini guest posts.

Few people are known to have received invitations to write guest posts for popular blogs based on what they had said in their comment. They were asked to expand on it. Fantastic right? Nevertheless, do not post with the intention of getting something out of it, and you might be surprised after all.

4. You need tons of traffic to be successful

All traffic is not created equal.

If you are not getting huge amounts of traffic from social media sites, don’t stress to the point of making yourself sick.

Traffic that seems to come from huge sites such as stumbleupon, delicious or digg seem to come in a wave. They leave as soon as they have seen your post. Even twitter is not particularly good in this regard. Not many people actually follow from twitter, fewer are likely to become regular readers. Shares or likes to facebook seem the better option as people doing this are more likely to stay.

You might tons of traffic coming your way – if you are lucky – but what you actually want is traffic that stays. That won’t bounce off.

Work to get traffic from blogs that you regularly go to, blogs in your niche, not matter how small. Because this is high quality traffic, interested in the same things as you are.

Few hundred engaged readers are way better than thousands and thousands of visitors to your site. These are the ones who are genuinely interested in you, your content and go on to develop a sense of connection with you.

These are the people you are looking for.

Don’t worry if you have few hundred readers, and you can’t write every day. Have fun, learn along the way and make friends with other bloggers. Focus on content as well as other areas and stop driving yourself insane with the question – is my content good enough?

And you will be fine.

This post was snagged from The Internet Archive, the author’s original blog is gone as well as the original source for this article.