Making a Quick Impact Online as a New Blogger

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You have become adept at social media. Your next step is to start blogging on your own. There are many ways to begin. Study other bloggers’ work and then start to blog about your business and about your passions.

As the technology continues to be more and more developed, it is more important for than ever for business people to use blogging as one of their main avenues of communication. Content in the form of a website was considered the most advanced way of delivering content to other people for a very long time. However, the content found on websites is now deemed to be static. With the advent of blogs, which has been around for several years at this point, the content that is being shared online is dynamic. The content is fresh and new content is being offered (and delivered) on a very frequent and regular basis.

As a business person, you will be doing yourself and your business a tremendous disservice if you don’t start to blog about what you do, what you have to offer, and how you can help other people to solve their problems. Blogging is definitely a means to your being able to build relationships with other people and to interact in a very effective manner that will hopefully lead to greater success for you and your business.

As a new blogger, one of the challenges is to deliver regular, high-quality content on a frequent basis. It is one thing to be able to write a few blogs and be done with it. It is quite another thing to write and publish two or three blog articles a week on an ongoing basis until the end of time.  It is very important to build up your momentum when it comes to your blog. Once you have a rhythm established, you will find it less difficult to keep up the pace of frequent blog articles.

Being a blogger involves a serious commitment. You can’t simply start writing and expect to be a success in one second. Just like it is with all relationships in life, you need to build your online relationships. You very well may someday be earning a nice amount of money from your blog, although that could be down the road a bit. Initially, however, you should focus on your first (and one of your most important) objective, which is connecting on a personal level with other people. You have made a commitment to creatively come up with new ideas on a regular basis and the commitment is not only for you and your business but is also for the people whom you are trying to reach. As a new blogger, in the beginning, there are several stages that you will experience. They are:

  • Listening: When you first start to blog, you should do as much research as possible. You should research topics about which you are interested. Additionally,  you should read the blog articles of other successful bloggers so that you can focus on what they do that has made them successful.
     
  • Euphoria: You have done a lot of research and you are confident that you are ready to actually start writing and to share your interesting and valuable thoughts with other people. You may very well experience a feeling of euphoria after you have launched your blog. People will start to read what you have written and you will be on top of the world.
     
  • Fear: Once you have moved past the initial stage, you may see that your readers are not reading your blog articles as faithfully and consistently as they were in the beginning. You begin to feel afraid that you won’t be able to come up with new and exciting topics to keep them enticed.
     
  • Being in control: Once you are more deeply into your blog writing, you may start to feel that you must write. It may not seem as though you are having as much fun anymore. The longer you think about it, the more frustrated you start to feel.
     
  • A feeling of isolation: You get the sense that, of all of the bloggers in the world, you are the one with the most difficulty when it comes to creating new ideas. You start to feel as though you are working in a vacuum and that everyone else has a large, good-quality readership and that those readers interact regularly with the other bloggers. It will come to you also.
     
  • Resentment: You start to feel resentful about having this huge commitment that you have made to blogging every week. The mere idea of blogging makes you uncomfortable.
     
  • Acceptance: If you did the right thing all along when it comes to your blog, you will have moved past all of the obstacles that you felt were preventing you from becoming a successful blogger. You will begin to understand why you made the commitment to blog in the first place. You start to feel excited about writing your blog and striving to come up with new ideas on a regular basis.
     
  • Determination: At this point, you have put a blogging strategy in place. Your goals should be reasonable and not impossible to reach. You will need to develop the blog by continuing to offer valuable, useful, and perceptive information on a consistent basis to your readers. Another one of your goals should be to engage your readers and generate interesting and thought-provoking discussions on all sorts of interesting topics.
     
  • Constantly learning: Once you start blogging, you will see that you are also learning a great deal from other people. The more you learn, the more interesting and insightful information you can offer to others.

Conclusion

The stages that have been described are, in some ways, very similar to the stages of grief. Not unlike those stages, it is important to persevere until you have gotten to the point emotionally where you feel really upbeat and excited about what you are doing and until you gain the confidence to know that your contribution to other people (in this case, in the form of a blog) is valued and helpful.

 We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook page.

Author

  • Carolyn Cohn

    Carolyn Cohn is the Co-Founder & Chief Creative Services of CompuKol Communications. Carolyn manages CompuKol’s creative and editorial department, which consists of writers and editors. Her weekly blogs are syndicated globally. She has decades of editorial experience in online editing, and editing books, journal articles, abstracts, and promotional and educational materials. Carolyn earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.

13 Responses

  1. Yolanda Washington says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Writing Mafia
    Discussion: Making a Quick Impact Online as a New Blogger

    Hi Carolyn,
    Being a new blogger, I found this article to be awesome! Thanks for the heads up on all of the emotions/phases I'm going through and will continue to experience. I now have a better handle on how to deal with it.


    Thanks again!

    YIW
    Posted by Yolanda Washington

  2. Louise DiSclafani says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: NJ Association of Women Business Owners (NJAWBO)
    Discussion: Making a Quick Impact Online as a New Blogger

    Carolyn…Again, great stuff on blogging. I am relatively new to it, so this was helpful.
    Posted by Louise DiSclafani

  3. Ronna S. Cohen says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Business Consulting Buzz Group
    Discussion: Making a Quick Impact Online as a New Blogger

    I thought your blog was very interested. I had planned to start blogging this month, but had to delay it because of technical issues. I will be reading your comments regularly to learn more about how to get the biggest impact.

    I do have one question. How do you find a list of people to follow. Everyone tells me to start doing it, but finding a list isn't that intuitive for me. I would welcom any suggestions you or other members might have.
    Posted by Ronna S. Cohen

    • Michael Cohn says:

      Rona and Margo,
      We wrote several articles about building a fan base using Facebook and Twitter. Just search our articles or better yet click on Facebook and Twitter in our tags list and you will find them. You will also find couple of them on our list of the 10 most popular posts in our blog sidebar.

      Regards,

      Michael

  4. Margo Thomas says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Business Consulting Buzz Group
    Discussion: Making a Quick Impact Online as a New Blogger

    Good question Ronna! I recently started blogging and was interested in finding out how to draw people to my blog, who will eventually become followers. My other issue, and maybe you can help me with this Michael is that my content is technical. I have been told to dumb-it-down a little so the content would be understood by the masses (I work with small to mid-size companies). So, I'm working with that. But any other suggestions for making technical content more simple?
    Posted by Margo Thomas

  5. David Spaulding says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: CXO Community (Exclusively for CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, CTO, CKO, CMO, CAO, CVO, CRO, CLO, CSO, and CDO)
    Discussion: Making a Quick Impact Online as a New Blogger

    In addition, it doesn't have to cost you anything. BUT, you should read about blogging (there are several good books) AND be able to write proper English! And, write regularly; if you're going to "blog," then don't do it once every other month; at least once a week. Then, include your blog address on your business card and let folks know about it.
    Posted by David Spaulding, CIPM

  6. Stephanie Greenall says:

    I first took on the idea of a website/blog months ago, and later scraped the project in favour of work. I have since then reorganized and recently started up a blog and I had no idea how much work, time and effort that had to go into it. Research is a big part of blogging, and I am glad that I actually love research or I would have crash and burned instantly. Even the initial building of a blog can be exhausting! Even with the ease of wordpress, it took me a couple of headaches and a call to Godaddy to get my site up! A blog is definitely something you don't enter into lightly. This article is a good description of what it feels to be a first time blogger! 

  7. Louiza Patsis says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Medical Education Communications and Pharmaceutical Marketing
    Discussion: Making a Quick Impact Online as a New Blogger

    How do you convert Blogger to Word Press? Where do you put a Pay Pal button?
    Posted by Louiza Patsis

  8. Jim Devitt says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: "Write It Down"-A Website for Writers
    Discussion: Making a Quick Impact Online as a New Blogger

    What suggestions do you have for someone that has written a novel and is not blogging about "self help" or other non fiction topic of expertise?
    Posted by Jim Devitt

  9. Alice Owens says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Social Media Advisors
    Discussion: Making a Quick Impact Online as a New Blogger

    Michael – which platform would you recommend using? WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr…
    Posted by Alice Owens, CIR

  10. Deborah Eade says:

    When you do freelance work you are often obliged to sign confidentiality clauses. Clients don't mind you mentioning them in a general list on a CV (or LinkedIn), but anything beyond that is out of bounds. So unless I'm really missing something here, this surely limits the scope for blogging?