Bloggers - Stop Reading Blogs!

I’m not letting anyone into Blog Traffic School who doesn’t first agree to the number one rule -

Rule: You Must Be Prepared To Write, And Write Often

You see blog traffic is dependent on one thing above all else - content. All the tips I provide in the course are useless if there is no content in your blog. All the activities in the course are designed to drive people to your blog, but if there isn’t anything there once they get there, well they won’t stay will they. I provide lots of tips on the type of content to write, but ultimately if you are not prepared to sit down at your computer and devote at least an hour or two per day to your blog you won’t be reaching any blog traffic goals very quickly.

Ignore The Blogosphere

I remember when I first discovered RSS feeds. I read reports of some bloggers who boasted a feed list of hundreds of blogs, which they watched each day. I think Dane Carlson said he had close to 500 or even more on his bloglines feed reading account. Whatever it was, it was a lot.

I started watching blogs too. I noticed many other bloggers were monitoring many feeds each day and filling their blogs with links to stories they found interesting on other blogs. It seemed like a circle of recycled content going from blog to blog.

As I started to watch blogs I found myself becoming overstimulated with ideas, most of which I never got around to acting on because there were even more new ideas the next day. I followed the pattern and blogged about other blog content, regurgitating the already recycled news which was going from newspaper to online news portal to blog and blog and blog. True, each blogger made things interesting by including their own point of view, but I noticed that the traffic results for me from regurgitated news wasn’t as good - heck, I wasn’t even interested in reading the same news on my own blog that I had just read somewhere else.

What did I do?

I stopped reading the blogosphere.

For a while I didn’t bother with my RSS feeds and only occasionally dropped in on some of my absolute favorite blogs, maybe two or three at most. Instead I went to work pumping out articles. I had enough ideas in my head for original content and I thought it would do my traffic a lot of good to sit down and write, rather than watch what everyone else was doing.

At one point I remember someone asking me how many feeds I subscribed to. I responded at the time by saying -

“oh, only about 10 - 15, and I don’t keep up with them very well. I spend most of my blogging time actually blogging, rather than reading other blogs”.

The person who asked the question said that I was probably being smart since it’s easy to procrastinate from writing your own blog by reading what everyone else is saying. He was right, at least in my case.

Reduce The Noise

The other thing I found advantageous about not reading hundreds of other blogs per day was that I cut the noise down in my own head. I wasn’t overstimulated. There are so many people blogging today that if you try and keep up with what everyone is saying you will end up paralysing yourself. You will spend all your time reading blogs and convince yourself that no matter what you do, what you want to blog about will have already been blogged about by someone else, so why bother writing at all!

The sad fact is that as the blogosphere grows it is somewhat true - your tiny voice is competing in an ever expanding pool of millions of other tiny voices, so to be heard you need to be special. By sitting down and making an effort to produce your own original content more often, you help your blog become that extra little bit special.

Of course I’m not saying avoid the blogosphere altogether. Just don’t let your reading of other peoples blogs impede you writing original thoughts on your own. Chop down your feed watchlist to only the cream of the crop and keep things simple.

If you are very new to your industry or very young and yet to gain experience and really don’t have that much which is original to say, then your job for the short term is to learn, in which case it’s okay to just read other blogs for a while as long as eventually you do take actions. The only way to generate original ideas for blog content is to study, learn and experience. That last one in particular is good - start doing some practical testing in whatever industry you are in and then blog your results, good or bad.

Watch The Watchers

What you will find is that a few bloggers become the de facto “aggregators” for their industry so instead of watching 50 blogs you will only need to watch the one blogger who watches the 50 blogs for you and reports back with the best stuff.

And of course remember, if you want to be a Blog Traffic School student, you better have some original ideas of your own. I expect you are a fan of the topic you blog about, so it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with original thought about something you love, right?

Yaro Starak
Blog Traffic King