Flickr photo by ten safe frogs
The blogging A-list is short, and you want on. But where do you start?
Believe it or not, the real starting point for professional blogging has more to do with character traits than it does with a “cool blog with great content.”
After six months of blogging, I’ve extracted seven must-have survival skills from some of the world’s top bloggers. These qualities have nothing to do with your niche or your audience — all you have to do is understand them and embrace them.
So without further ado:
Hustle — Gary Vaynerchuk
The web is a quick and dirty place to make a living — there are so few rules and regulations. The only way you’ll stand out is to have at least half as much hustle as Gary.
Gary is the master of hustle. If you listen to him, he’ll hustle you to hustle, too! His advice: get out of your comfort zone and start “doing some damage.” If you follow Gary on Twitter chances are you’ll read stuff like this:
hungry …………. and I don’t mean for breakfast!
Originality — John Chow
John Chow’s website tagline is “I make money online by telling people how much money I make online.” And it’s true, that’s pretty much all he does.
And if you really think about it, who else can make that claim as accurately as John Chow?
What’s your one-of-a-kind, often-replicated-never-duplicated claim to fame?
Ruthlessness – Jeremy Shoemaker
Accepting failure is something we must do ruthlessly as bloggers. The web is too vast and hypersonic to waste time on things we will never succeed in.
Shoemoney may seem rough around the edges, but look at the photo of him holding $132,000+ check from Google. If you read his story and get to know him you’ll soon learn how “get over it,” too, or in his words:
…I encourage you to take a hard look at what you fail at and quit wasting your time thinking you will get a different outcome by practicing it.
Usefulness – Brian Clark
Copyblogger is a one of the web’s most useful blogs thanks to a keen editorial strategy. Brian has leveraged a team of bright editors who work to ensure their content is always relevant, interesting and practical to readers.
One of the biggest challenges to bloggers — especially ones not marketing savvy — is being useful. It’s very easy to write post after post if all you’re doing is talking to yourself.
It gets a lot more challenging when you’re publishing to meet the needs and desires of a hungry audience. Brian understands this better than any blogger out there — because he’s useful.
Generosity – Darren Rowse
Go visit Darren’s ProBlogger and take a look around. Spend some time there and see what’s available — I guarantee you’ll find more helpful content about blogging than anywhere else in the universe.
The reason why Darren is one of the most successful, respected and appreciated bloggers out there is because he’s hugely generous. He’s more than willing to share what he has to help others.
The web demands reciprocity — give first before demanding in return.
Honesty – Aaron Wall
Aaron is a leading SEO guru who also blogs. His posts are usually very content rich and in-depth, but that’s not always why I read him (SEO is mind-boggling to me).
What I really admire about Aaron is his honesty. He’s the perfect kind of guy to explain such a complicated and messy subject like SEO — no sales pitch, no smoke screen and no one-sidedness. He just tells it like it is:
There have been SEOs who have argued – with a straight face – that whilst it’s ok for them to game search engine algorithms, it’s not ok for others to do so.
I trust Aaron because I know he isn’t hiding anything from me. And because I trust him, I value his ideas. So consider me a loyal customer — not a bad place to be in for the both of us. All from Aaron’s simple act of being honest.
Thoughtfulness – Steve Pavlina
Steve Pavlina is a blogger who takes his time, but never takes too long. When I read his blog, it’s one of the few times in my day when I actually slow down and listen to his ideas.
Steve’s style is clean and simple but deeply engaging. It’s obvious he puts great effort into his writing, as he notes:
To create an article like this takes serious effort, not to mention the hard-earned experience that’s required to write it. This article alone took me over 15 hours of writing and editing.
Thoughtfulness is vital to great blogging. It not only brings out your inner genius — but your readers’ inner genius as well.