Update October 2017
When this post was first published 5 years ago the blogosphere was a different place and this blog had a different focus than it does now.
This particular post linked to about 9 different bloggers because they had posts which I thought were educational, informative and or entertaining.
I thought those would be of interest to the readers here, help provide stickiness and maybe lead to those other bloggers either linking back and or becoming readers.
Anyhoo, most of those bloggers have shut down their blogs and moved on to other things so I pulled the links.
Not to mention the focus here has become far more personal. I still write about business and social media but with far less frequency.
If you want to know more about that stick around and I’ll share more information in a future post.
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I hadn’t intended to comment or blog about whether The level playing field has turned into a content arms race because my focus has been elsewhere.
The goal had been to write about other things and to focus on other areas and not just because I want to be remembered.
I could be writing a book now or following up on my letter to Richard Branson.
Instead I fear I have ignored the message of The Substitute Paper Boy & Boring Blogs and come up with something less than I am capable of.
What This Post is About
This post is about what happens when you spend too much time thinking about writing and not enough about doing it. It is what happens when you worry about whether your blog is growing and if your are writing about the “right content.”
I am irked by it because I know better. The biggest challenge most bloggers face is time and the face they see each day in the mirror.
One of the most heavily trafficked posts here is Some Styles Are Eternal- Long Live The ’80s. It may not sound like a post about business and blogging but it is. If I had thought about it I could have taken that particular post and turned it into a series.
It is what smart bloggers and business people do. They look at what works for them and capitalize upon it.
Tricks, Traffic and Triumph
If you remember reading Writer’s Block Is A Myth- Lord Wilner’s Castle you’ll recall reading about how I never worry about writer’s block. That hasn’t changed. I don’t worry about it, but I do concern myself with producing good content and growing the blog in a timely fashion.
What I am trying to do with this post is meet all of those needs by doing several things at once. There are two different kinds links contained within this post:
- Internal links.
- External links.
The external links are to posts other bloggers have written that caught my eye. I want to share them with you because I think they add value and because I hope those I link to will choose to come visit and that is where the internal links come into play.
If this works the way I want it to they will do more than point, click and surf their way in and out of here. They’ll take a few moments to look around and ideally decide this is a place to hang out.
It Might Not Work
It might not work. There are no guarantees, but one of the things I like best about the blogosphere is how it lends itself to experimentation.
This is a dynamic environment where there are rapid changes and it is important to be willing to test out new opportunities and to take a chance.
Sometimes things happen and we get so caught up in what is going on around us that we lose perspective. I know, that is usually tied into a story about how we should be grateful for what we have because someone just suffered a terrible loss, but it doesn’t have to be limited to those situations.
There is a reason and need to take a moment for perspective during the non emergency times too.
This may not be the perfect post or what I would consider my best, but I would rather produce content that is good than not produce anything at all. Sometimes the chase for perfection is far more limiting than it should be.
And with that I am going to climb back out of my foxhole and resume working.
Would love to hear/read your comments.
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