Three things you don’t need to be a successful blogger. (And three things you absolutely need!)

I can tell you from personal experience that the following three things do not make you a better blogger:

1. A nice new Mac Mini (though they are lovely!)
2. Desktop blogging software.
3. A catchy blog title.

Because, you know, the strangest thing happened to me: I bought a new Mac Mini, I downloaded a very popular blogging program for the Mac, I came up with a catchy title for a new blog and I bought the domain, but then … the blog posts didn’t write themselves!   Doesn’t matter if you’re thinking of running the best blog ever on mobile phones uk gig venues or restaurants and your private life, you have to actually type stuff in for it to happen!  I would turn on my nice new Mac and fire up that blogging software and … there would still just be this white window with no text in it!

Previously I had thought …

“Yeah, I’m totally going to start getting into the whole blogging thing.  That’s like creative stuff, you know.  And creative = Mac, so I totally want a Mac.” 

Got the Mac. 

“I bet there’s some really good blogging software out there for the Mac!” 

Googled it and found it.

“This program rocks!  I’m going to write some awesome blog posts with this stuff!” 

“I need a name for my blog … yeah, that one would be perfect!  Is the domain available?  … Awesome!  Bought it!”

What followed was an extraordinarily long period of time during which I created … let me to try to remember … how many posts was it?  Oh that’s right, I remember now:  ZERO.  Nada.  Gar nichts!

So the day finally came and it was time to start!  Fire up that desktop blogging program, ready to rumble, … cool, it’s loading now … what’s this? … 30-day evaluation period expired!

You get the point.  Guess what it actually does take to be a successful blogger.  I’ll tell you:

1. An editorial calendar.
2. The discipline to follow that schedule.
3. Other people who keep you honest and on your toes.

Editorial Calendar

If you want to be serious about blogging, you need to operate somewhat like a newspaper.  Plan the content and schedule its delivery.  The worst time to write a blog post is probably when this happens to you: “Oh my God it’s been eight days since I did a post I need a topic and I need to write about it NOW!”  You can image how that post will turn out.

Give yourself an hour, at least once per week, brainstorm some topics, choose the ones you want to pursue, and put them on a calendar.  Look, you don’t need to get fancy with this.  Just like my Mac Mini didn’t actually help write blog posts, neither will a gorgeous wall calendar make much difference as to whether you actually follow the schedule!  I take a piece of white paper, mark up an ugly grid showing Friday to Thursday (because we have our brainstormings on Thursdays at Lynn Terry’s mastermind group — more about that later), and fill in the grid with the topics, putting each in the day it should appear on the blog.  Then I tape it to the wall.  It couldn’t possibly be uglier and cheaper.  But it’s all I need.  You can see mine from this week in the photo here.  Problogger also had a nice example a couple of months ago.

Discipline

Well I can’t really help you too much with this one.  But I think we can all acknowledge that discipline improves when you’re working on something that actually interests you.  If you feel passion for your topic, you will (eventually!) write about it.  I’m assuming that you do have passion for your topic; otherwise I’d have included “a topic you are passionate about” as one of the things that you need to be successful.  And it would have been number one on the list.  So I’m just assuming you’ve got your passionate topic to blog about.  I already had a passionate topic in mind when I bought that Mac, downloaded that blogging program and dreamed up that catchy blog title.  You know what happened after that.  So passion alone is, unfortunately, not enough, but at least it helps with discipline.  And you know what else helps with discipline? …

Other Peeps

I find it hard to believe that “lonely bloggers” — those who just put up content and don’t really engage with anybody — are successful.  If so, more power to them; they’ve got a skill that I don’t, and it’s called “operating in a vacuum.”  Doesn’t work for me.

Imagine that you tell yourself — and only yourself — that you are going to start doing 30 pushups everyday.  Now I want you to rate the likelihood that you will actually do it.  Then compare it to the likelihood of you doing it if you tell everybody in the office that you will.  I think probably you’re more likely to follow through if you’ve got someone else to “answer to”.  If you fail to start doing those pushups and you only told yourself about them, big deal — you suffer a momentary “aww shucks”.  But when you know that nosy Joe in Finance will keep asking you, “Hey Bill, how’s that pushup program going?”, you get that added bit of motivation to actually do it. 

So having someone to answer to, someone to keep you honest, can help with motivation and discipline.  I get that by being part of a mastermind group run by Lynn Terry.  For me, that’s more than just having any old person to answer to — at the mastermind group, I’ve got a bunch of experts — whom I cannot yet call my “peers” — as well as a bunch of people just like me.  The experts help setup goals each week, hold brainstorming sessions, etc.  People like me take the bold steps of announcing — in writing, so to speak — the goals that we have.  When you announce your goals to people as successful as Lynn Terry, two things happen: 1) you keep the goals ambitious yet realistic; 2) you really feel like you want to meet those goals!

So save your money and skip the new shiny computer (or not), don’t worry about blogging software just yet, and be happy about your catchy blog title but don’t kid yourself into thinking it means anything as far as creating interesting content goes.  Instead of all that fluff, just sit down, make an editorial calendar, commit to sticking to it and announce your commitment to others such as in a mastermind group (I recommend the one I’m in!).  If a mastermind group is not in the cards for you, at least find someone, tell them about your blog project and ask them to help you stick to your plan.

And don’t forget to enjoy the process!

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