How To Learn From Bloggers Who Are Better Than You
In every blogging niche, there are a few successful and “un-ignorable” bloggers. They have a massive flowing. Their readers “receive” what they write, fairly well. The reader engagement is so impressive that if one of these bloggers just tweets about sneezing, I bet even that will be retweeted!
Perhaps, you look up to them in awe, trying ever so desperately to find their “secret sauce”, so that you can also apply to your blogging. Honestly, I don’t think there just one thing, that contributes to the success they have achieved. It’s a series of actions (aka hard work), that have been put into during a period of time.
If you are looking for that one thing that will rocket your blog to fame, stop looking. Sure, you can read all the How To Get 1000 Subscribers In A Day or How To Make Thousands Of Affiliate Commissions from Video etc type of stuff out there, but UNLESS you take action on what you read, you will be just where you are today.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not implying that you should stop reading other blogs. What’s important is that you have a systematic way to implement all what you learn from your blogging niche frontiers. That’s what this blog post about.
I will detail out an action plan you can use, to learn and grow from other bloggers who are in successful in your niche. In addition, I have some future blog posts planed, where I detail out some bloggers I admired and learned from over the last few years. Hopefully, seeing what I have done will inspire you also to take a similar approach for your blog. (Subscribe to this blog’s RSS, so you won’t miss out on any)
That was just a sneak peak on what’s to come. Let’s move on with what’s planned for today..
1. Find 5 successful blogger/blogs in your blogging niche
Who are the bloggers you admire? What blog do you like the most that have something you can learn from?
I’m sure there are plenty. Just stick with 5. Yes, there is a reason for picking just 5 blog. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you have too many blogs to really study and actually implement their advice.
2. For each blog, identify one area that you will focus on
When you take one blog, there could be loads and loads of things that you wish you could do. So by selecting just one area, you narrow down the focus and you will be able to monitor improvements in a measurable way. If you try out many things at once, then it won’t be easy for you to figure out why it’s working in the first place.
3. Make a list of actionable items
This is where you study their success. Observe what these bloggers you look up to carry out. Make a list of things that you have observed and want to try out yourself in your blog. It could be a post writing style, type of twitter messages, back linking approach etc.
Don’t lose your personality and individuality in trying to copy successful bloggers. That’s not the purpose of this exercise. What’s important is that you adapt an approach that suits you and not end up as a copy blogger of another successful blogger.
4. Come up with measurable goals
You should be able to measure “how you improve”.
For example, it could be the number of back links for a post, comments or the number of twitter followers, retweets or ranking of a post in Google etc
While it’s difficult to attribute the growth to just one measurable item, pick the one that’s most related. If you see a sudden spike in numbers, you know what you are doing it working, for the area you are focusing on.
5. Schedule a time to work on actionable items
The list you make in step 3, will involve a fair amount of work on your work. Sometimes, we just put off things because we simply have no time or it just seems that way often! So you have got to “block out” a time, where you can focus without any distractions to work on your actionable items.
What I mentioned above isn’t really rocket science. It’s a simple, methodical way to take action and improve your blog. It’s requires hard work and discipline on your part. This is the only way, you will be able to see results and improve your blog. I really.. hope you will give this a try.
At the end of the day, there is “no magic secret” that other bloggers use to be successful. All of them at one point or another started out just like you and me. They just use the same tips and techniques that work, repeatedly and have “made it their own”.
Now, get started…
- 1. Find 5 successful blogger/blogs in your blogging niche
- 2. For each blog, identify one area that you will focus on
- 3. Make a list of actionable items
- 4. Come up with measurable goals
- 5. Schedule a time to work on actionable items
I like to try to build relationships with the bloggers that are clearly better than me. The point that many people don’t realize is that they are people just like you – they like meeting new people and helping others.
You can learn so much from popular bloggers just by having small conversations. It’s easy to connect with them, too – just be helpful. Even if you think that they couldn’t even use anything you could give them, there’s something of yours that they need. Email them an evaluation about their readers. Send them a message on Skype about an error on their website.
They’re far more likely to help you out if you connect with them. Great post.
Joe Boyle recently posted..Crafting an Amazing 404 Page