Five Ways Bloggers Lose The Plot

Blogging is not going away any time soon. It enables everyone, anyone to get his or her thoughts out. Publishing is not exclusive anymore. There aren’t any rules but principles can help each blogger find what works for him or her. As with anything it is easy to lose the plot. Here are five ways bloggers lose the plot:

Objective

One of ways bloggers lose the plot when they make blogging the goal and not the means. On this blog, I write mostly about life and leadership. Every now and then I write posts about something unusual. For example when I ran my first 10km (6.2 miles) race.

Another non-typical post I did was one on my grandmother’s last words to my siblings and I. There are few reasons I blog but won’t go into detail about it here. You can read a little more about why I blog here and here.

Anyone making blogging the aim is missing out on the opportunity to do stuff that matters. And, perhaps change the world.

Quantity

I hate it when the so-called blogging experts tell you that it is your blog and you can do with it whatever you want. Whether it means publishing once a week or once a month, and in the same breath tells you, you must publish a post a day.

Blogger, you lose the plot when all you do is produce quantity at the expense of quality.

They proceed to tell you how many posts would be great for exposure on Google and on and on. Bleh.

 

Doubt

You lose the plot when you don’t ship because of self-doubt. I’ve been shocked several times. The good shock, by posts I thought might not be good enough. “Life In A Moment” is an example.

It seems some of the posts I doubted myself the most are the ones that have received the most hits. One thing I’ve learnt is that if I’ve gone through it, or a lesson I’ve learned, it will be helpful to someone else.

Bloggers lose the plot when they give into the illussion of perfection at the expense of the good.

Ship despite your doubt. By so doing you will help someone deal with their own doubts.

Perfect

I had this problem when I got back to blogging a little more seriously. The wanting-everything-to-be-perfect problem, I mean. I would take days writing a blog post.

Don’t get me wrong; it is important that I deliver some sort of quality. However, the quest for the perfect blog post or perfect anything has killed a lot of great things before they’ve been able to put one foot out the door.

Dear blogger, make peace with the imperfect [Click to Tweet]

Some ideas that have changed the world were not perfect when they did [Click to Tweet]

Stop trying to be perfect at the expense of shipping [Click to Tweet]

I’ve learned to perfect some of my posts by not working on them but paying it forward. By this I mean, drawing lessons from the earlier post to write a better one next time.

I’ve helped a number of people start blogging recently and one of the problems I’ve noticed with the newbie bloggers wanting everything perfect right from the start. This stops a number from getting started.

Some things you can only better as you ship the imperfect constantly. Your commitment must be to creating better content with each post. However, don’t let you excuse for not shipping be perfection. Perfection is a unicorn that you must keep chasing.

True

One of the other ways bloggers lose the plot when they place a price on themselves. By this I mean bloggers who are willing to endorse anything as long as they get paid for it.

I will never recommend something I don’t believe in. Period. Stay true to yourself and your audience. Tell the truth.

How else do bloggers lose the plot? What would you add?