Blogging

Another Reporter Down: Blog-Frigging-Tastic (rant)

Garth Beyer

If you haven’t caught it yet, Shea Allen, a reporter, has been fired.

While, sure, reporters get fired, Allen is added to the group who have been fired from posting on their personal blogs. Which, in turn, adds to the argumentative flame of where we draw the line between work writing and personal writing (and sharing).

Shouldn’t journalists be able to live a double life? One professional and one personal? If not, then why is it okay to have a fully professional life, but not a fully personal one in the world of reporting?

My response is this.

If anyone deeply cared, flat-out hated what she had to say on her personal blog, refusing to watch her professional reporting, are those people a news network really wants to have as part of their audience?

I sure don’t.

By the way, I eat almonds at work, I feel uncomfortable around disabled people, and I’ve had to do an interview without underwear because all of mine were dirty.

So what. Fire me.

What Makes A Successful Blog

Garth Beyer

Those who have said that content is everything, to focus on content first, that content matters most were partially wrong. Wrong, mainly because information is already infinite. Content is already there and all blogging is about is presenting information in an original way.*

What makes a successful blog is not so much the information you provide as how you provide it. Yes, of course it needs to be valuable information, but do you present it in a blunt, matter-of-fact way? Or, how about presenting it in a comedic, captain obvious way? Or, be extremely passionate. Or, express your message in 10 words or less.

Anyone can deliver, but how you deliver means everything.

*The restructuring of information is often misinterpreted as content creation. No. Content is already there. Restructuring is about show, not tell.

 

Stay Positive & Not What, But How

Garth E. Beyer

Subscription

Garth Beyer

I’ve made the decision to close off my blog to subscriptions. In particular, email/RSS feed subscription and for two particular reasons.

Yes, a blogger absolutely benefits from having subscribers. That’s all good and great, but by subscribing, you – the subscriber – benefit less. What?!

I used to be subscribed to about a dozen blogs and I would get updates on them every few days. After only a couple of months, I found myself deleting the emails; some without opening to see what the newest posts were about. The reason for this leads to the first reason why I closed off subscription to my blog.

I quit needing their particular form of motivation. I stopped needing their information, their persuasion, their enthrallment. In other words, while I never stopped loving their blogs, I found myself reading them for the sake of just reading them and not for the sake of them helping me or bringing me to make some action.

I don’t want you (my readers) to enter this lull or habit. In a sense, it can even be self-defeating; one is more interested in learning how to improve their life than they are in improving it. If it’s between you taking a risk to do something in your life and reading my post for the day, well, you know which one I would pick.

The second reason for ending subscriptions I only realized a couple of weeks ago after someone said, “I’ve been on your website. I don’t read everything you write, but I hop on their every now and then.” I went on to tell them that they shouldn’t feel guilty for not reading every day, I don’t write so the same person can read every single post. I have this idea that I am simply here when you need me. I’m not going to force you to show up by making you feel guilty or reminding you to read my content through subscriptions. If you don’t show, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that it’s probably best you didn’t.

If you want to read what I have written, then you can type www.garthbox.com in your web bar or add me to your favorites bar. I’m looking for connections, not subscriptions.

 

Stay Positive & Let’s Connect (@)

Garth E. Beyer

The Best Time To Post Your Blog Articles

Garth Beyer

Is immediately.

You aren’t the best blogger, neither am I, no one is. Even if you post 5,000 articles in two years, you can still be better, learn more and grow further. You learn by doing, by putting yourself (in this case, your article) out there. Post your blog articles immediately so you are forced to work on more to post and thus can continue growing and learning quicker.

Even more importantly, you need to be producing a lot more articles than you think. There needs to be enough ideas and stories to populate your blog without the need to schedule one a day for the next 2 months.

After all, how could you do that to your readers? How can you deprive them of valuable information, how can you make them wait for something that could change their lives, of something that somebody may need now, not 2 months from now.

The days in which you could become popular with one single post are over. Before, you could follow your audience closely enough to know exactly when to post a particular piece of information. Now, you post as much as you can because there is always someone somewhere looking for the answer you have.

 

Stay Positive & Your Readers Don’t Need To Wait For You, They Will Search For The Answer Somewhere Else. Will You Have Your Article Posted First?

Garth E. Beyer

So, You Want To Start Blogging Pt. 2

Garth Beyer
What Are You Waiting For?

The one piece of advice that most people give about starting a blog is to find your niche and then start writing all the content you can about it.

Find Your Niche

Write To Find Your Niche

What remains unseen in some of the most popular blogs that are written on a specific subject is the first or second post that was ever written on that blog. If you go to the back of Shel Israel’s posts you will find that before he began zoning in on his passion (Social Media), he had a blog where he covered everything that entered his mind. He started by writing on every idea that went through his brain and put it on his first blog, RedCouch before he truly discovered his niche and created his current website.

Tim Ferriss had a similar situation. What you see now is his 4 hour work week blog, but if you go to the last page you will find his reminder that you can catch older content on his previous blog Tim Ferriss: The Human Experiment Blog

This is nearly everywhere, you just don’t see it because it is rare that you go to the last page of any blog. Many”famous” bloggers such as Shel or Tim, keep their old blogs because it was their journey to finding their passion. It may be for you too. Then again, other well-known blogs choose to delete their old scribblings because they only want to be known for their niche content and respected for their passion, not the oddball ideas that got them there.

To be more direct, don’t wait to start a blog. Forget the advice to find your niche before you start writing. Just write… write on every idea you sort-of-kinda feel is worthy because that is how you will discover your passion.

You know what happens to people who wait to find their niche before they start writing a blog?

They don’t find it.

 

Stay Positive & Go Write Right Now

Garth E. Beyer

So You Want To Start Blogging Pt.1

So, You Want To Start Blogging

Garth Beyer

I read a quote the other day after I published a post and it said “the first thing to do to become a blogger is to read other blogs.” I’m sure when you wanted to learn how to blog you have read and been told something similar. Everyone says to read blogs that get a lot of attention and that are in your niche of writing so you can get accustomed to the way your future viewers want to read.

But,

what is problematic is that they  suggest doing it BEFORE writing your own posts.

There are two points to this. The first is that if you want to write a blog on a specific topic of your interest, you better already be reading blogs, books, articles, blurbs, press releases, references, magazines and any other material related to your field of interest.

The second problematic point is that when you follow other people’s blogs, when you interact with the authors of the books, when you connect with the writers of the articles you read, they are going to want to see what you have created. For example, every time you follow a blog or “like” someones post on WordPress, they get notified that you are following them or liked their post. The writer gets a message like this sent to them: ” They thought article title was pretty awesome. You should go see what they’re up to. Maybe you’ll like their blog as much as they liked yours!” You don’t even have to tell the person who wrote the blog you liked to check yours out, it’s done for you, it’s common curtosy, it’s expected to read some material in return. Given, maybe the big blogs that are actually making an income will ignore the suggestion WordPress makes for you, but when you are starting up a blog you better try and connect with everyone possible. More so the blogs that don’t make a lot of income. That’s how you get to become a blog that makes an income.

More to the point, while you better be reading up on the information on your niche that other people are also writing on, it would be beneficial to start writing posts before really connecting with anyone else. Get your information out there, if you are starting a blog, you obviously have something powerful enough to say to everyone.

Don’t waste valuable time searching and following other blogs, seeing how they write and interacting with them. When you sit down at the computer, get to work on creating content that the writers of the blogs and articles you read, will want to read back and provide feedback. Blogging is a two-way street, you can’t expect to grow if you have nothing to show. You can’t expect to improve if you have nothing to present to the specialists you take a fancy to.

Stay Positive & Write First, Talk Later

Garth E. Beyer

Asking For Assistance Pt.2

Garth Beyer

Another factor of the online community theme is that along with finding someone who is a professional that will help for free is that they expect nothing in return.

In the real world if someone  helped someone else move items from their shed into their basement, they would then say that they have some stuff that needs to be moved as well. (Scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours)

But, in the world of electronic ethics, no one expects anything in return. Everyone knows that the only way to get respectably noticed is to give and keep giving without any intentions of receiving. The online writing community knows that in order to ever even think of being successful, you have to help others out as much as possible. (Something we need to practice off the web too)

I recently wrote a post that you need to prepare for the best and expect the worst because you are most blown away with joy when something positively unexpected occurs. In relation to the online community, if you prepare for the best to help all other people that you can and expect nothing in return, you will be surprised and ecstatic at how devoted those you help are to helping you.

 

Stay Positive and Maintain The Have-Someone-Else-Do-It Attitude

Garth E. Beyer