Jason Murphy

On Becoming a Valued Blogger

Aug 23, 2007 Blog General, Business & Marketing

I was browsing recent headlines in Netvibes and halted on a post title that stuck out from all the others. Since SES is happening this week, most my feeds have “live blogging” coverage of the SES sessions, and for the most part are pretty much the same. Not much uniqueness in 20 different bloggers paraphrasing someone else’s presentation, but that’s a different topic for a different time.

It was Copyblogger’s title (surprised? me neither.) that grabbed my attention away from the SEO blogs. The post is a guest post from Ryan Inman: If Your Blog Disappeared, Who Would Miss It? As a blogger striving to find a voice, I almost felt like this behaviorally targeted directly at me.

Ryan starts off by saying that whether you realize it or not, your blog belongs to a neighborhood. That if you contribute to the community you will be recognized, and if you don’t, well your neighbors may never know you moved if you left.

Would anyone miss my blog if I it ceased to exist? I dunno, but I really don’t like to think of it that way. I’d much prefer to approach it as “Am I helping others enough?”. I know I have areas to improve on that one, but I know I’m on the right path.

Ryan offers a few tips to help build value to your subscribers. A theme that seemed to be a trend in blog memes lately is to be unique and interact with your audience.

For example, Ryan Caldwell has three tips that he recommends bloggers should be doing a better job of. What are they? In their most basic form they are participating in your industry, linking to other bloggers, and developing conversations with audience.

On Income Hero, a recent and very welcomed addition to my feed list, Adomas Kontautas offers similar advice as part of 10 tips he did to reach his success. Of note, keeping track of every person he meets and looking for opportunities to serve. By helping out others, you’ll not only feel good to have been of service, but you’ll also reap the karmic rewards later through recommendations, links, testimonials, or just plain good vibes.

And there is plenty of advice at Problogger, ranging from the very simple task of responding to every comment, to a profound method of making a reader famous. Which is ingenious, by the way, in that it creates huge brand loyalty for that reader and his/her circle-of-influence.

So as I struggle to find a voice for this blog, at least I know I’m on the right track for attempting to develop a style in the first place. I’ll just keep on keeping on until I fit a niche as well as it fits me.

• Today is Day 15 out of 30 for My Own Thirty Day Challenge.