Have you seen the Liberty Mutual commercial playing the song Human?
I think it’s great on a few levels. It’s the perfect combination of message, music and marketing.
But for this post I thought I’d look back on my mistakes as a blogger. Because after all, bloggers are human too and I’ve certainly had my fair share of blogging mistakes.
I think it’s true that it’s fine to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. That’s my goal. Learn from mistakes and do the best I and the team at GBW can do to write great posts for clients.
So you can be sure we’re always learning from mistakes and improving. We’re not looking to make mistakes, but we are looking to learn.
1. You Need To Link To Sources?
My very first post on my very first blog was a copy and paste job from a blog I really liked. My intent was to share the post with the readers (there were none at the time), but it came off as me trying to steal the content.
After a nasty note from the person that wrote the post I took it down and we became pretty good friends. I explained my intent and he understood. That was a tough lesson in giving credit. It was a tough lesson, but a good lesson.
It also showed me that you really have to do things to learn some of the lessons. And while they’ll be tough you can move on and learn to do things the right way.
2. Wrong Reader
I’ve always thought I had a pretty good handle on writing for the right reader, but on the GBW blog in the early days it was kind of hazy. It’s really important to hone in on the exact person you want reading your posts.
You can forget the other people out there because there is usually a very specific type of person that will actually give you money.
And even by writing very specific posts you’ll still get some traffic. Some of those people might not be your ideal customer, but they still might become customers. Others might not be customers, but they might know people that are.
In the end, don’t lose focus like I did in the early days with GBW. I’m still trying to get better at this.
3. Wrong Topics
On each of my blogs I would say I’ve written on the wrong topics. I’ve written about what I thought was interesting instead of what people actually want to read.
There are some people that know what people want even before they do. You can try this, but you’ll lose quite a few and hit on only some.
A better strategy, that I’ve learned, is to focus on the things people have actually shown interest in.
You can do keyword research and look at the questions your target readers are asking. This way you know they want something and you can give it to them.
4. Not Blogging
When I first started GBW I kind of stumbled into it on accident. I threw up a site and a blog and really didn’t touch the blog that often. Every other week or so I would throw up a post.
Since then I’ve become committed and we now post every business day. Best decision by far for getting more traffic, leads and sales.
5. Reading Only A Few Blogs
Even today I tend to read only a handful of blogs.
But I’m starting to realize that finding new sources of information and perspective are great for inspiration. It seems like all great inventions come from people finding inspiration in something completely non-related to what they’re doing.
Last week I was visiting my parents and the movie Twister was on TV. Helen Hunt’s character found inspiration for the tornado device by looking at a yard sculpture.
Inspiration from an unrelated place.
I’ve been trying to read more science and psychology lately and it’s been leading to some great inspiration for blog posts.
I’m sure I’ll continue making mistakes, but it won’t stop me from trying. I think a big part of life is pushing through failure always looking for success. If you come out ahead in the end I would think you’ve had a pretty good run.