Is This Misunderstood Thing Your Biggest Blogging Problem?
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“Everything. Everything And All At Once.”
If I were to ask the blogging platform most people use to write their blog, about what its purpose is, those words would be its response.
I remember four years ago I was taking my first ever “business building” course. It was at a local community college and 30 of us sat in a little room with a white board at the front. Each day we would show up and chat excitedly about our dreams of business success. The money we’d make, the respect we’d earn, the independence of “being the boss”.
One of the most difficult things we were confronted with in those classes was that we would have to target a “market” - which meant ELIMINATING people from those who we would persue as potential customers. When our business teacher would ask us who our future customers would be, we replied “EVERYONE who wants what we’ve got of course!”
He wouldn’t sigh after hearing our answer though. He wouldn’t get frustrated. He actually expected this answer - it’s the answer everyone starting their new business gives. Unfortunately, it’s also the WRONG answer.
Eventually we learned that.
Eventually.
I get a lot of email from people asking me why my individual posts don’t have my sidebar. Or why I tell people to REDUCE what people can do on their blog.
I also see people speaking shit about what I say, and trashing me because my blog isn’t as “fancy” as theirs is.
So before I reply, let me say, I know how you feel. Big, fancy, appeal to everyone, have every function, do everything. This is what we would love our business (and our blogs) to do. But we can’t and they can’t.
Because actions happen in a linear way. Life is linear. Not parallel.
A boy meets a girl before he ask her out. He doesn’t marry her before he meets her. He doesn’t marry her WHILE he meets her And she doesn’t do those things either.
I know figuring out which actions people take and when they take them isn’t easy - but figuring it out is your work as a business person (and blogger). (And you can always see what I’m doing, I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff).
Here’s a list of actions you want a reader to take in the order they usually take them:
- Find your blog.
- Read one of your posts.
- Subscribe to your feed.
- Tell other people about you (word of mouth, link, social news submission).
- Buy something (or click something)
And if that’s what you want to have happen, in the order it IS going to happen - why are you confusing a reader with an experience that doesn’t take into account this reality?
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October 5th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
hey this is good stuff man, I think we might be on the same wavelength here I am going to really try this out Tony
October 12th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Your blogging insight is concisely to the point and whose logic is very easy to follow. I am creating a new blog and would like to set it up as you’ve suggested without the nav bar on the side of each internal article page.
Are you able to share with me how that should be done when setting up a blog. Is there a way to only have the nav bar showing on the main page and not on each individual artucle page?
Thank you.
October 12th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Jen thanks for the kind words.
I use the “Kubricker” Wordpress Theme on this blog - and many other well known bloggers use it as well. You don’t have to customize it to have it functioning the way my blog does.