The Retrospector

I’ve been looking for a good reason to change up my topic matter lately and it looks like Darren over at ProBlogger.net has inspired me to do that today. I’ve been hitting up a few technical topics that have struck my interest the last couple weeks, but being a site defined as giving a hindsight perspective on many aspects from my past, sharing some of my habits is a perfect fit and an excuse to make a new category on my blog.

Darren has requested some entries for lists of habits that people consider effective for blogging. I’ve seen some pretty good stuff coming from the sites people have submitted already. I also see a variety of people behind the posts. I think that’s awesome, because the diversity of people should surely bring out a good list of habits to read about.

“Why on earth are YOU writing this?”

Now, I’m new to blogging. You probably winced at the list in my archive section not really being a list when you got here. “How can this guy possibly be writing about effective blogging?” is probably what went through your mind. Well, I may be a blogging noob, but I consider myself effective in very similar circumstances where I’m speaking, chatting, messaging, or posting to large audiences.

I’ve moderated discussions and newsboards in a game environment for over 4 years, spoken to all levels of people in large and small corporate environments, and held thousands of conversations via email, messengers and newsboards. Doing all these have forced me to develop a set of habits to be effective in each medium that I find carries over to blogging quite well.

Ok, I’m probably boring you. “Get on with the habits! Is one of them to make me leave your site before you get to the point?!?!” Well, I try not to do that. I just wanted to give some sort of background so you don’t wonder what soapbox I’m coming from when I show my list.

– Habits –

1. Know Your Purpose/Motive

Why blog? Make sure you understand perfectly well and agree with your purpose often. If you find yourself wondering why you’re doing this, your readers will probably detect the loss of direction.

As for me, I found myself having to repeat many things I discussed in the different conversations I was having. It became too difficult to manage emails and chats in a timely manner and maintain the passion to discuss many topics while repeating myself. Someone suggested I start a blog and use it as a repository to reference.

This model of communication has been enlightening and seems to make much more sense to get my thoughts and ideas out to share. When I discovered that I could help recover some of the costs of hosting with ads, I didn’t hesitate to get a site up.

2. Have a Plan

EagerBeaver: “I just made a blog!”
CoolCat: “Sweet. Having a blog pwns… What’s it about?”
EagerBeaver: “Uhhh, I’m not sure yet.”
CoolCat: “That’s cool, whatcha doin’ on it?”
EagerBeaver: “Hmm, I forget. Let’s go play some WoW.”

Effective people have a plan to execute, be it general or specific. Everyone works different, but I have a general plan because I improvise a lot. However, if something changes, I visualize my plan with the change before I continue.

Things to plan:

• Type of posts - I tend to write informational posts about lessons learned or things I’ve realized from my experiences. Mostly things I think will help others learn from my mistakes and successes.
• Content - I have dozens of post ideas and summaries just waiting to make their way to the blog. This list currently grows a little faster than my archive list, which can be good and bad, but I may end up in a slump once in awhile and be out of luck on finding topics. Better to have too many than not enough.
• Financial means - I’m hoping the ads and affiliates will help cover the expenses. If not I’m sure I can cover the $80/yr.

3. Keep a Regular Schedule

This sort of goes with having a plan, but it’s important enough for me to be a separate point. Regular persistent posting is the key. Big gaps in time invite even bigger gaps. It becomes easier to lose track of time while losing return readers. On the other hand, big bursts of posts all at once tend to drive me away from wanting to write for awhile. Burnout after too much posting can lead to wanting to take a break.

I have limited time. I have a family to support, a career to maintain, chaos to improvise around, so when is it best to write? I usually like the hours where others aren’t going to need my attention. I write every single day (well, weekday), even if it’s just for a few minutes. My blog entries may not get out on a daily schedule, but I’m working toward one all the time.

Typical day:

• Early mornings are best for me. It’s quiet, so I can read, browse, comment, and respond to messages easily. Then I’ll typically publish articles after proofreading yesterday’s writing.
• At lunchtime, I brainstorm. It’s an excellent change-up from work. I’ll make notes, jot down ideas, and finish thoughts. It’s amazing how much will jump out on the paper after being in full-concentration mode at work for a few hours.
• After the kids are in bed, I typically get cozy in my chair and go into a massive typing frenzy where I elaborate on ideas or complete unfinished posts. This is my flex time that will either keep me up all night because of how much I get into it, or I’ll wrap up whatever topic I’m on and go play with some cool technologies or something. It really depends on how the day went.
• Weekends are reserved for my family. As much as I’d like to think about how much more traffic I could assemble or networking I could do, by the time the weekends come around I simply remove myself entirely from work or Internet to focus on what’s most important in my life. It really helps me go into Mondays with a real fresh outlook too.

4. Learn something new every day

I’ve found that this has helped me more than almost any practices for all kinds of things beyond just blogging. For programming, design, management, running a household…I consider myself effective in all these areas and I give a lot of credit to learning something every day about each of them.

As for blogging, there’s an overwhelming amount of information out there. Once I got started off a few tutorials and some hints/tips/tricks sites I felt like I was getting the hang of it.

ProBlogger has actually been a great resource for me. Every day I hit the site, and if there’s nothing there of interest to me on the main page, I’ll dig something up from the archives that might help me be more efficient or effective. I don’t consider myself by any means in line to make a full time living from blogging unless it just happens that way. But I do really find blogging exciting enough to seriously pursue it as my main medium of communicating my experiences.

This might not help initially, and I’ll probably explore more sites out there as well to get a good mix after a while. But for the time being I’m positive that if I simply learn something new every day it’s a guaranteed efficiency builder.

5. Be mindful of your audience

In running large meetings, watching executives/peers and feeding off their responses (either verbal or through their body language) can make or break a sale, proposal, or whatever you’re trying to convince them about. Being able to interpret what the audience is trying to tell you without them actually coming out to say it is a valuable skill. This is a habit I deem very effective when trying to build a community or inspire others.

Here’s some signs that I’ve found you can read from a blogging audience:

• Traffic - if it exists, you’re doing something right. If it’s depleting, they might be trying to tell you something. Maybe they’re just not interested, maybe your new florescent green background with flashing orange links everywhere is repulsive…whatever it is, try to figure it out and respond accordingly.
• Comments - These are golden nuggets. Of all the readers on your site, someone’s actually bothering to give you a piece of their mind. Good or bad, it’s a great indication of how the other 500 people that didn’t speak up are thinking too.
• Rankings - Sites like digg or reddit are somewhat of an indication what your audience thinks. I’ve enjoyed some traffic from both and it’s pretty neat to see the votes pour in. It’s kind of like a boolean comment in some respects. My first post almost hit the first page of reddit in an hour and it brought in about 400 visitors on the first day. I certainly didn’t expect it, but it was neat to see people interested in what I had to say. Didn’t take long for the title to get lost in the mess of posts though.
• Links - others linking to your site is a great piece of feedback. They’re passionate enough to not only comment, but they’re sending traffic your way. I know this isn’t always good, but hey…it’s feedback you should pay attention to.

and finally…

6. Be sincere and honest

Integrity is an absolute must. If you expose yourself as dishonest or a major exaggerator, you may not only lose your audience and some traffic…but also confidence of anyone who knows you personally & reads your posts.

As a general rule, if you’re unsure about something…just say so and state your opinion on the matter. Falsehoods are quickly exposed with an audience, and I’ve seen some people crash and burn really fast in a meeting where they claimed success during an obvious failure.

Being honest is eventually picked up by your readers and you gain respect for it over time. Just telling it like it is will bring them back for your perspective if they know you never try to stretch the truth for a short-term gain.

Conclusion

I know many of these may seem pretty generic and might not be what Darren had in mind, but they’re what I’ve applied from my pre-blogging days (Ok ok, which is up until about a month ago) to my current blogging habits that are working out very well for me so far.

Things are still new to me, and I suppose as I learn more from sites like Darren’s & from community projects like the habits of highly effective bloggers project more habits may surface to the top of my list as well.

For now, blogging seems to be a great medium to share my thoughts more effectively than through dozens of emails and chats anyhow. I’m eager to building it up much more going forward and helping others benefit from it.

Tags: blogging, effective habits, effective blogging

   

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