The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers
If you are to be successful as a blogger, there are definitely a number of habits that need to be cultivated.
The business of forming a new habit involves being disciplined enough to commit to repeating the activity, whatever it is, enough times for it to result in a permanent change of behaviour.
On a number of occasions now, I have come across posts at other blogs that list the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers.
As a fan of Stephen Covey myself, author of the best-selling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I thought this was a very nice idea.
So today I thought I would put my thinking cap on and come up with my own list.
Here is my own list of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers: Habit #1: Be Authentic The first thing all good bloggers manage to do is write in a way that is authentic, by which, I mean honest.
They are true to themselves, if you prefer.
They allow their personality to show and they don't worry too much about how people will react to them.
This is not an arrogant attitude but an authentic one.
You get to see the real person.
As a consequence, they naturally attract those who are in harmony with their central themes, core values and overall message.
Habit #2: Blog with a Friend in Mind Good writers don't write as if they are speaking to a group, they write their posts as if they were speaking to a single person and, ideally, a friend.
When speaking with a friend, you can say things that may be tough to take on board, you can confide and you can get subjects out on the table, so to speak, that it might be easier to simply avoid, and talk about them without embarrassment.
Habit #3: First Things First Perhaps, the most ubiquitous advice to new bloggers is that they should blog frequently.
All top performing bloggers do this.
They set a particular blogging frequency, whether it is daily, weekly or whatever, and they stick with it over the long term.
Come hell or high water, they consider the process of writing that blog post as their most important task of the day and they give it all the time and attention it deserves.
Habit #4: Have Faith Given the inherent latency in the process of cause and effect typically experienced whilst working on the internet, results are simply never immediate.
By the time that measurable improvements in results are evident, it can be very difficult to accurately correlate them with the activities that were responsible for the improvement.
Effective bloggers don't worry too much about this.
Sure they keep a close eye on their stats, but they have complete faith in their working methods.
Habit #5: Seek First to Give Your Best Perhaps the best thing about blogging is that you don't have to sell anything to anyone.
That means you can liberate yourself from the need to separate your best work from your freebie stuff.
If you are selling books for example, you really need to be dealing with something in those books that you don't generally give away.
Not so with blogging.
All the best bloggers give their best stuff away freely and generally, they are able to make a fair return via advertising.
Habit #6: Socialise The social media is, of course, here to stay.
Sites like Facebook and Twitter are where a lot of the blogger's intended audience hang out.
So, effective bloggers make excellent use of social media to reinforce and communicate their messages.
Having a Facebook fan page and a regular schedule for tweeting is, I would say, pretty much a necessity for an effective blogger theses days.
Habit #7: Stay Sharp Good bloggers stay abreast of what is happening around their subject area.
They participate in the online discussion around their chosen niche and they become true experts.
They are able to chew over new ideas, think about them and comment thoughtfully, which is why their blogs eventually become a must-read for anyone truly interested in the same field.
The business of forming a new habit involves being disciplined enough to commit to repeating the activity, whatever it is, enough times for it to result in a permanent change of behaviour.
On a number of occasions now, I have come across posts at other blogs that list the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers.
As a fan of Stephen Covey myself, author of the best-selling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I thought this was a very nice idea.
So today I thought I would put my thinking cap on and come up with my own list.
Here is my own list of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers: Habit #1: Be Authentic The first thing all good bloggers manage to do is write in a way that is authentic, by which, I mean honest.
They are true to themselves, if you prefer.
They allow their personality to show and they don't worry too much about how people will react to them.
This is not an arrogant attitude but an authentic one.
You get to see the real person.
As a consequence, they naturally attract those who are in harmony with their central themes, core values and overall message.
Habit #2: Blog with a Friend in Mind Good writers don't write as if they are speaking to a group, they write their posts as if they were speaking to a single person and, ideally, a friend.
When speaking with a friend, you can say things that may be tough to take on board, you can confide and you can get subjects out on the table, so to speak, that it might be easier to simply avoid, and talk about them without embarrassment.
Habit #3: First Things First Perhaps, the most ubiquitous advice to new bloggers is that they should blog frequently.
All top performing bloggers do this.
They set a particular blogging frequency, whether it is daily, weekly or whatever, and they stick with it over the long term.
Come hell or high water, they consider the process of writing that blog post as their most important task of the day and they give it all the time and attention it deserves.
Habit #4: Have Faith Given the inherent latency in the process of cause and effect typically experienced whilst working on the internet, results are simply never immediate.
By the time that measurable improvements in results are evident, it can be very difficult to accurately correlate them with the activities that were responsible for the improvement.
Effective bloggers don't worry too much about this.
Sure they keep a close eye on their stats, but they have complete faith in their working methods.
Habit #5: Seek First to Give Your Best Perhaps the best thing about blogging is that you don't have to sell anything to anyone.
That means you can liberate yourself from the need to separate your best work from your freebie stuff.
If you are selling books for example, you really need to be dealing with something in those books that you don't generally give away.
Not so with blogging.
All the best bloggers give their best stuff away freely and generally, they are able to make a fair return via advertising.
Habit #6: Socialise The social media is, of course, here to stay.
Sites like Facebook and Twitter are where a lot of the blogger's intended audience hang out.
So, effective bloggers make excellent use of social media to reinforce and communicate their messages.
Having a Facebook fan page and a regular schedule for tweeting is, I would say, pretty much a necessity for an effective blogger theses days.
Habit #7: Stay Sharp Good bloggers stay abreast of what is happening around their subject area.
They participate in the online discussion around their chosen niche and they become true experts.
They are able to chew over new ideas, think about them and comment thoughtfully, which is why their blogs eventually become a must-read for anyone truly interested in the same field.
