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Lighting Your Blogging Fire With Community and Imagination

Lighting Your Blogging Fire With Community and Imagination

If you are pausing before blogging, wondering why you do it and what good your blogging does, it helps to stumble across posts like Jan from Circular Communication, who said in “Why You Should Blog With Community in Mind and How to Do It”:

Blogging can be a wonderful experience where you learn a lot, get inspired by great personalities and get to now new people. You may even get to teach others what you know, inspire them and win new friends. There is so much more to blogging than meets the eye. So much more than merely churching out content and monetizing your blog. Or at least there can be. You decide what you want from blogging when you define your purpose and start your blog. The next step is to actually make it happen. It will probably be a long journey, but since the journey is the purpose is that exactly as it should be.

Are you stumbling with your blogging, failing to find the joy and passion you once had? Here are some quick tips to energize your blogging experience, just as Jan found:

  1. Find Friends: Find other bloggers to comment and communicate with to build relationships that inspire, promote thought, and challenge you to move forward not backward.
  2. Aim Lower: Sometimes we set the blogging bar so high, it smacks us in the head as we pass by it, or we dangle from it, unable to reach the ground. Lower the bar and think simpler, easier, and attainable. This doesn’t mean “dumbing down” your blog’s content. It means setting goals you can reach in measurable, reasonable steps.
  3. Comment on 10 blogs: Set aside some time in the day or over the course of a couple days to find worthwhile blog content worth commenting on and comment. Watch what will happen.
  4. Start Over: I don’t mean start over with a new blog. Look at your blogging topic and think about how it was when you started. What were the challenges? What made the process harder than it needed to be? Now translate that beginning perspective into an experienced, knowledgeable perspective and blog about it. Remembering your roots can help you remember your passion and why you blog in the first place.
  5. Guest Blog: Find blogs with similar content and ask them to guest blog, or get some guest bloggers on your blog. New input generates new interest and enthusiasm, reigniting your blogging spirit.
  6. Look At Your Blog With a Mirror: Remember your school days and writing secret code with a mirror. Da Vinci was an expert in disguising his writings with the mirror technique. Use it to look at your blog with a similar mirror-like perspective. Instead of looking at it as you see it, reverse the image and look at it as your readers do. What are they seeing when they look at your blog through their eyes, not yours. You might find some very interesting discoveries from your reader’s point of view. And if this is too hard, ask for help.
  7. Ask: Ask for help. Ask for advice. Ask for questions. Ask for answers. When you ask, you often get an answer and that answer can inspire you forward with your blog’s content and energy.
  8. Quote: I find a lot of blog post ideas from quotes. Quotes from other bloggers as well as quotes from all kinds of people, including those long past.

    What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story. You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.
    – F. Scott Fitzgerald

    See Also
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    If that doesn’t get you inspired to write…

  9. Take a Break: Take a break. Leave the computer. If your mind keeps racing back to your blog, then stop and deny it access in your imagination. After a few hours or days, then let it move towards your blog in your mind. Ask yourself why it is so important for you to return to your blog. You might be surprised by the answer and the new self-confidence you feel in writing your blog.

I’ve just brushed the surface of things you can do to stimulate your imagination regarding your blog to find renewed interest and enthusiasm. Do you have some suggestions for lighting the blogging fire under bloggers?

View Comments (4)
  • Tip #3: Yup, commenting is a great way to give others a boost as well as yourself. It’s incredibly gratifying for me now that I’m finally garnering more comments on my own posts. And knowing how rewarding that is for me, makes me want to pass that feeling onto others by commenting on their blogs more often.

  • First of all thanks for the mention Lorelle. Truth be told was I particularly pleased with that conclusion myself. That I have proved quotable is another stepping stone for me.

    What I am wondering is however how come practically no one comments here. The Blog Herald is one of my absolute favorite destinations. It has great writers, great content, great design and is easy and intuitive to use and still it has nothing even resembling a community feeling.

    The only thing that comes to mind would be that people interact with the authors on their own sites instead of bringing part of the conversation here. It is however sad as I really miss that element here. The one element that would truly put this place over the top so to speak.

    Perhaps the coolest part of this is that I am now quoted in Japanese as well since your story also appeared on Blog Herald Japan. The fact that not a single person visited my blog having read this and that so far only one person (Thanks Rob!) commented is quite disappointing though.

  • Actually, when comments are important to make, the Blog Herald gets its fair share. But much of the content on this blog doesn’t require, suggest, nor need comments.

    I assume we have very wise readers here who have passed the point where they need to waste everyone’s time with “Good job!”, “I’m enjoying this, thank you”, and “Thanks for writing this.” They only say what they need to when the need is great and inspired. I like those kind of comments much better.

    Also, the Blog Herald, I believe, is read mostly through feeds as it has so many authors publishing so many articles, it’s a lot to keep up with on the site itself. Thus, constrained to the feed, it has to be something good to generate a comment and visit to the actual post.

    Comments aren’t indicative of a blog’s success. There are many other factors.

    As for your own stats, just wait. In general, as discussed recently on Gary King’s article on when the best time to publish a post is, There is little traffic at the end of a week.

    Honestly, Jan, don’t measure your success by staring at your stats. Keep generating good content and focus on the pleasure that gives you. The traffic will come. Just let it work naturally. Don’t force it. It’s more enjoyable, and surprising, when it finally shows up.

  • Actually it was not meant to be about me or my disappointment, but about how different blogs work differently. As you know do I have a blog where the comments are part of the point and when I see one with less than expected I get curious that’s all.

    I do understand it better now that you explained it. I couldn’t agree more about the “me too” and “great post” comments. I want that kind of comments that add something or fill in the missing parts if there are any.

    I promise not to get obsessed with my stats, but when you write something, which you find to be worth reading is it hard not to wish for someone to come read it. Especially when you hear about or see in action how this and that blog grew so fast so soon.

    At least I can use the time I would otherwise have spent answering comments on my own blog making comments on other blogs. Right now I am even conversing with more bloggers directly on their blogs, which is great as well.

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