What does blogging feel like to you? Part 4

So, what is successful blogging? Do you have a successful blog? Well, maybe that whole fame-and-fortune thing is what you define as success and maybe it isn’t. Maybe a sudden 15 minutes of fame was a rush and now you’re back to consistently delivering your content. Maybe you want to make this your main source of income. In a [major] way, a successful blog is one that meets or exceeds the goals that YOU put in place for it.

I have gotten a lot of blogging inspiration from various bloggers that have a special place in my Google reader. Some of them specifically offer advice on blogging and some are just people from whom I’ve gleaned inspiration from the way they just do it.

It is often said that there are no real experts or gurus in social media. Social media includes the blogosphere. What I am writing right now is not really from my perspective as a marketing, PR, or social media consulting perspective. Much of what I am saying here is based on my experience as a content consumer—an experience that has been extraordinary recently as I have learned more about the blogosphere and, frankly, what an RSS feed is.

From social media consumer and participant to "manager," it's been a wild ride!

What does blogging feel like to you? Part 3

For me, sometimes blogging feels like homework in the way that kids are supposed to stereotypically feel about homework. You know: blah. Still, it’s homework that I am assigning myself. It’s homework because it seems like/is something in addition to the full-time job I have. I really want to do it and I feel like post ideas run by me left and right—literally!—but I feel like I just don’t have time. The dog hasn’t eaten my homework, it ate my time!

But, this is where the work comes in. Diligence, focus, creativity, consistency, voice, motivation, marketing and management are just some of the factors involved in successful blogging.

What does blogging feel like to you? Part 2

Whether or not you blog for income, there is still respect for consistent and creative--or even just common sense--content. Aside from motivation, there are plenty of resources for helping you establish yourself as a quality blogger. Whatever “quality” means, I guess. In this arena of self-producing and self-publishing, one just may be one’s own boss. Without much physical capital and with time and focus being major investments in your blogging, one may find it easy and even attractive to just…slack a bit.

I figure that your motivation to blog is cultivated by your desired outcomes, including the level of engagement of your readers. Sometimes people may get this backwards: they have enough motivation to start creating content and when fame-and-fortune (to use a euphemism) don’t come their way in the first hours, days, weeks or months, discouragement runs amuck.

What does blogging feel like to you? Part 1

I feel like I've neglected this blog recently. Has Twitter been my excuse?

I think I’ve fallen in love with Twitter this year and it seems to be my social networking platform of choice.

But, wait. Isn’t Twitter a micro-blogging platform? Anyways, I never said the words “social media” until I began managing social networking accounts that weren’t my personal ones; I maintain a difference in my mind between social media and social networking. Twitter as a micro-blogging site is a type of social network but it doesn’t seem to displace anything other than perhaps my blog. Well, in the world of “social,” Twitter doesn’t replace Facebook at all for me, but the engagement I find on Twitter is a lot more, well, engaging than I thought it would be. I use the two platforms to interact and in different ways with different people and groups. The “conversation” and “dialogue” have been of value to me.

My blogging was more of a monologue that I thought I would just put out there and hoped/expected that someone would find it intriguing/funny/witty/relevant.

I’m working on that. Recently, I was better at consistently posting what I hoped were quality and relevant posts but when I became more engaged on Twitter and I learned that Twitter was, well, micro-blogging, I didn’t feel so bad about neglecting my Blogger dashboard once in a while.

I’m planning on getting back into the swing of things, though. I have decided on shorter posts and posting series of content on topics that I am interested in and that I hope to effectively share with people that are also interested in those topics.

I hesitate to say that I should find blogging pleasurable and I don’t know why. I may think that at the moment because that next thing to say is that blogging is one thing for sure:

work.

But, I’m looking forward to it! Check out Friday’s post for the topics I plan on writing about in my upcoming post series.