Blogs are about creating and nurturing conversations, that lead to making connections, that in turn lead to business or personal relationships. While not all bloggers are able to make those connections, let alone build relationships with their readers, the potential for doing so exists. Perhaps the difficulty lies in developing the overall goals for the blog.
To start out on your blogging adventure, it is important to have some idea of where your blog journey will lead. While the actual end result might be a rapidly moving target, that constantly changes in time and space, the route to that goal requires some planning. After all, even a traveller who is heading in the general direction of Europe needs some plan for reaching that general location. While the specific choice of European countries to visit might change upon arrival, the traveller can't simply arrive in Europe by magical means.
Many bloggers, however, seem to believe that some magic potion exists to get their newly born business blog to its appointed destination. It just won't work that way. A plan of action is required or the business blog is destined to fail. A blog plan involves a number of steps. They must all be taken if the blog is to succeed.
First of all, the new business blogger must ask what the blog is expected to achieve in the way of goals. For some blog writers, like me, the goal is to share information with others with whom I hope to make a connection, and to help them achieve success in reaching their business and personal goals. Through my blogs, I try to establish lasting friendships with my readers and to help them in any way in reaching their many and varied goals. This blog is part of that ongoing process.
For other business and marketing bloggers, the goal is to market and sell their products and services. Public relations bloggers aim their blog toward enhanced media relations and understanding of their company by the general public. The blog purpose for other businesses might be to gain better search engine rankings, through the SEO blog power of links, and link bait of fresh interesting and informative blog content. Other bloggers will seek to achieve entirely different goals, based on their content and their expected blog readership's interests.
Once a blog goal is established, a roadmap is necessary to get to that target location. A process must be set out to write timely and informative posts, determine the number of posts written per week, find new and interesting content ideas, build a readership audience through increased visitor traffic, and develop interaction and connections with the readers, other bloggers, current and potential customers and clients, and the internet population as a whole. Don't forget to include having fun with the blog too. All of that work takes some planning. I never said the process would be easy; just that it's necessary.
The process of blogging is not as easy as waking up one morning and saying, "I think I will start a blog today and get millions of new customers." If it were that easy, everyone would own a blog, and every blog would be successful beyond anyone's wildest imagination. The fact is that writing and maintaining a blog takes work and dedication. That is what makes them so valuable.
Building connections and long term relationships doesn't happen overnight. Nothing in life worth anything happens immediately. You don't just meet someone one day and marry them that night. Well, maybe a few overly inebriated people in Las Vegas might do that, but they are the extremely rare exception.
Building business relationships takes time as well. Like the blog that developed the potential relationhip, the conversation between blogger and reader is an ongoing process as well. The prospective customer, client, or business partner has to get to know you and trust you. That process takes time, just like any other relationship in life. While a few people are able to make almost immediate connections, for most people the time frame is much longer.
To create a successful blog, and develop long term connections and relationships, the blog must have its goals determined. The goals must be flexible enough, within a reasonable range, to allow for changes in the economy and society in general, and the blogger's business plans in particular. A plan that outlines the process must be established for achieving those goals. After all of that initial planning, the real blogging work begins. Fortunately, it's fun and rewarding, both personally and professionally.
Trust the blogging process and keep a positive outlook.
You will develop interpersonal connections and lasting relationships on all levels.
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