WiNG – What else?

A few days ago I had the chance to read a blog article by Neil Patel giving tips to starting bloggers. The first question sprouts almost immediately… who is Neil Patel? Well, despite what he writes about himself on his about page, I have never heard about the guy before. Either he is not as influential as the Wall Street Journal claims or I am a lost cause despite being, in theory, working as a web specialist.

While I found it to be a rather interesting read, and I am pretty sure it will be of use to many, I must admit I am not sticking to the essential points in most of the post. In fact, when I finally decided to start a blog, on the widest spectrum of the invented word, I actually cared for none of them, which I guess that makes sort of funny to comment them on my second post (well, first post since a welcome post should never count anyways).

Don’t blog about news

Within your industry there are probably dozens of blogs that write about the news. So why do the same? I know blogging about the news can get you more traffic, but it doesn’t provide your readers with much value.

Not a bad point in the slightest… for as long as you care about your readers. Considering I have none and that I expect none, I might as well just discuss news when I feel like it. I never expected news to be a core topic, or niche, for this little space; but I never discarded the chance to discuss them at times. At any case, if you are wondering by now what is this place about then worry not, you are about to find out… sort of.

Pick a niche

My first blog was about marketing, the problem with that niche was that there were too many blogs that already discussed marketing. Sooner or later I realized this and started blogging about social media marketing instead of general marketing. After I did this, my blog became so popular that it got into the Technorati 100.

Probably a good tip… that I care not for. I am totally unconcerned with popularity and, to make it worse, I simply refuse to write about a specific topic. I started this place out of curiosity, with willingness to write about what was important or interesting to me at one specific point of my life, not with the Technowhatever top-100 in mind. Therefore, no niche, just writting for as long as I keep liking doing it. I can live with the concept of having no readers, this place was made for myself first.

Pick a big niche

As I mentioned above, my first blog was about social media marketing. Quick Sprout also had a niche at one point and it was personal branding. Both of these niches were so small, that I got tired of blogging on them. With my first blog, I just stopped blogging on it. With Quick Sprout, I ended up changing the blog from being on personal branding to business.

Same issue as avobe applies here: with no niche there is no worry for its size. I must admit however it makes sense if you are into having loads of followers, lots of activity, etc… I guess that, up to a certain point, you could qualify my ego as the main niche of this place. In that case, rest assured my ego is of epic proportions and surely provides material to write about for the next 45,000 years (rough estimation).

Be passionate

I wasn’t too passionate about social media marketing, which is why I stopped blogging on Pronet Advertising. If you aren’t passionate about what you are writing on, your readers will be able to tell. Just look at the content on Pronet Advertising, you can tell by reading it that I didn’t care about the blog.

No reserves on this one.

Well, maybe one. Passion is more of a trait of personality than something you can switch on and off. Sometimes, when people who are not naturally passionate try to force it out, passion is mistaken with agressiveness. I trust it is not necessary to point out the possible troublesome outcomes of that so, even if passion surely spice things up and it is recommended, you simply should not push for it if it is simply not your way of doing things.

Don’t burn yourself out

When I started blogging, I used to blog twice a day. I got burned out and felt that I was writing too much. Blogging shouldn’t seem like a chore, you should enjoy it. I now blog once a week on average and I love doing it. Don’t force yourself to blog to often or else you will get burned out.

Absolutely no objections on this one at all. It was not on my initial plans before reading it on the article and it is not on my plans today either.

Make money

There is nothing wrong with making money. If you are spending a lot of time blogging, you should be rewarded from it. With Pronet Advertising, I made money from ads and consulting deals that came through the blog. With Quick Sprout, I am not making any money from it, which is fine because I don’t care for the money I could make from ads.

If you are in a position where you don’t need money, that’s great. If you aren’t, you better figure out a way to make money off of your blog.

This is a tough one. It is not my intention to make money out of this place either directly (ads) or indirectly (as in promoting myself). I do not even think making money should be an aim when you start a blog in the slightest. That said, I won’t deny a chance for a possible contract if it shows up here for obvious reasons (specially with the world sunk into economic crisis). Let me be clear on this regard once more, “if it shows up” is not the same as “looking for it / actively seeking it”.

Don’t spend too much on a design

I spent around $5,000 getting Pronet Advertising designed. What I didn’t realize is that you don’t need to have a cool design to have a popular blog. If you look at some of the most popular blogs on the web, such as Boing Boing, there isn’t anything special when it comes to their design.

The main thing you should be concerned about when it comes to your blog’s design, is that it needs to be usable and simple.

Good words here, although a bit outdated somewhat. Web interfaces have been transforming in the last years into minimalistic presentations and overused reflections… or, summarizing, to whatever Apple does. I can’t help but find it ironic the recommendation of simplicity and not spending a buck in design ending up linked with Apple. As for myself, I took a default blog theme so far that is not like anything Apple and that I actually like… but I am yet to test how much I can tweak it to be more like me.

Have a unique design

With Quick Sprout, I am using a generic blog design. It looks great, but too many people are using it. This is making my blog blend in with thousands of other blogs. Because of this, I have two options:

1. Modify the theme and make it look different
2. Change the design

Oh shit, you scared me for a second here. When you said “have an unique design” I almost thought my Apple-design theory would have been proved to have no basis whatsoever… good thing I read the 1st option afterwards or I would have had to remake a rather decent paragraph (not my best, I know, my apologies).

Write detailed content

If you look at the blog posts that I wrote when I first started Quick Sprout, you will notice that they aren’t too detailed. Until the last month or two I continued to write sub standard blog posts and because of this Quick Sprout wasn’t growing. Once I started writing detailed blog posts, my traffic increased and you started to enjoy reading the blog.

I was never a fan of short texts on a blog, you have twitter for that. So no excuses on my behalf as well except for the mandatory introduction post… which is an introduction anyways. If I told you everything on the start of a book would you keep reading it? Surely that is the cause of the low reading ratio among normal population these days…

Respond to every commentor

The biggest mistake I made was taking commentors for granted. If I responded to every commentor since the first day I started blogging, I would have built tons of relationships. After I started to respond to every comment, I got to know a ton of people on a personal level, such as you.

Even if I do agree on the stance about not taking commentors for franted, replying to everyone does not seem like the best of ideas. If you are an avid blog reader you will have noticed a lot of comments that could be considered… well… trolling. Last thing you should ever do is replying to those for sure, and lets not even go into those that, without trolling, just post nonsense. Making relationships possibly a great thing, but you should at least be somewhat picky on chosing with who. Please, let me clarify that being picky does not mean unwelcomming.

Build relationships with other bloggers

If you want your blog to be popular, you better get to know other bloggers. The easiest way to make your blog popular is to get other bloggers to blog about you and your blog. Sadly, I didn’t figure this out until a year into blogging.

After I figured this out I started building relationships with many of the top bloggers. When I launched Quick Sprout I told these bloggers and they naturally blogged on it. This lead the blog to have a 1000 RSS subscribers within the the first 24 hours of launch.

Well, if you already knew the top bloggers from before you started Quick Sprout thats cheating, mind you. This tip simply cannot apply to a new freshly created place like this one, so I will simply ignore it. Of course, consider yourself invited to comment anything at your own leasure here if you wish but, yet again, as I have stated at the start I am not truly concerned about having readers really.

Pick the right blogging platform

My first blog was on Movable Type and this one is on WordPress. I had tons of problems with Movable Type such as comment spam and worst of all it wasn’t easy for me to make changes. Due to this I had to spend a lot of money on Movable Type developers. Once I switched to WordPress I was able to do everything myself. This saved me a lot of money and time.

Well, I actually picked WordPress, so there is not much to argue to this point. I must admit, however, that I picked WordPress for much more random and obscure reasons though.

Don’t write for Digg

Pronet Advertising did very well because it got on Digg a lot. Digg traffic caused the blog to grow like a wild fire, but it caused me to lose my core reader base. On the other hand Quick Sprout hasn’t got on Digg more than once and I have a very strong core user base. This is the main reason Quick Sprout has tons of reader interaction compared to other blogs.

Who’s this Digg dude? Now seriously, Digg was never popular on my country, therefore I am simply unconcerned by it. Also, I’ll be damned if anyone ever reads this other than me and, if someone does, actually diggs it. So yes, I actually follow this statement somehow.

Tell your story

Open up to your readers by telling them your life story. I didn’t do this during my first few years of blogging, but now I have a very detailed about page. I wish I did this from day one because it creates a stronger bond between you and I.

If you don’t have a detailed about page, you should consider writing one. Don’t be shy, make sure you open up to your readers.

TODO: update my about page some more when I am not doing it on a 5 minute rush.

It’s not about you

Who doesn’t want to write about their accomplishments? Bragging may sound cool, but people don’t like it when you brag. I did this a bit when I started Quick Sprout, but luckily Darren Rowse from Problogger set me straight and showed me why it isn’t wise to brag.

If you want to do well in the blogosphere, write with the intent of educating, not to brag.

Wait, wait, just wait! This place is actually about me! Heck, maybe I am wrong but blogs were born as 21-century diaries your sister has no need to steal because you made the contents public already! Surely many people started to use them for other activities such as fake journalism (because the writters are almost never journalists and rarely can keep a neutral stance on anything or bother to be actually informed about what they are speaking about), fake magazines (because many would argue about the lack of style and flashing lights of traditional spoon rather than just using it for soup), etc. However, speaking of yourself is not necessarily bragging, mind you, a practice I despise myself.

As I said, I believe it is a quite interesting article to read but, given my own singularity (I guess), it just does not apply for me on most points. I did read the article before starting this place and I am afraid I simply did not have it on my head when I did it, but that does not mean many will find it actually useful.

At any case, as I said, this is my place. It is actually about me. After all, that is where I got its name from (probably also paraphrasing a well known coffee-machine advertisement with George Clooney but…)

This is WiNG
What else?

PS: I do not look like George Clooney. I better update that on my about page.