Throw Away my blog. I’m Starting Over.

Caught your attention, did I? Well good. That was the point.

I’m not really starting over at Technosailor, but looking back over the last 2+ years, I know I wish I could change some of the things I’ve done in my blogging career. The reality is that every blogger is a newbie once and newbies usually (always) make mistakes. It’s what you take from those mistakes and how you adjust your course that makes all the difference in the long run. One day, I will sell Technosailor, or simply mothball it and no longer post here. Who knows? Maybe I’ll start a new blog. But if I do, there’s quite a bit I’d do differently. Here are five of them.

1. Set a Goal and Stay on Topic - Looking back over the years, I have wandered quite a bit. At one time, my justification was that I wanted a general content site. To that end, I’ve historically had quite a lot of guest bloggers and have said “write about whatever you want”. Recently, I’ve focused a lot more in the area of tech and spun off politics and most other stuff to other blogs, but I still, in the immortal words of Brad Shorr, “freewheel” quite a bit. :) Setting a goal is important for many different reasons, not the least being search engine optimization (SEO) and monetization. Plus it’s difficult to establish a hardcore following when so many different topics are discussed.
2. Sought Out Experts - Not enough can be said for mentors - people who know the business and can help you get where you want to go. In the early days, I despised “the experts” deeming them as self-important pricks that sought to keep the little guys down by linking only among themselves, etc. I’ve come to have a tremendous amount of respect for key people and have chosen to align myself with them and learn from them. Making this decision paid handsome dividends in my own reputation and success as a blogger. I’d highly recommend to anyone beginning in blogging to not try to “go it alone”. Whether it means joining yourself to a blog network or simply “becoming a regular reader” of highly successful bloggers, it’s important to soak up as much from these individuals as possible. They are success stories and their wisdom can help you too.
3. Learned All I could about SEO - Great SEO only recently became something that I’ve attempted to do. By great SEO, I mean techniques like optimizing title tags, linking regularly and often to other parts of my blog, create interlinking post series, etc. Not enough can be said of that and my relatively recent awakening in this area has prompted assisting others in gaining that momentum on blogs and non-blogs alike.
4. Worried Less About Design - I know this sounds ironic since I just launched a new theme yesterday, but design is overrated. I watch some blogs who change themes on a weekly basis and I wonder why. I used to do this too, but readers like consistency and changing themes is mildly disorienting. It’s bad behavior, really. Secondly, I have more RSS readers now than I do regular web readers. Which means it doesn’t really matter what my design looks like to them. In the end, the thing that makes a site worth more is the content, not the design. The design can set a blog apart, but it is not what makes the blog. Wish I would have grasped this concept two years ago!
5. Realized my own Potential and Pursued it - This sounds incredibly cocky, but hey I have a reputation for such things, so let’s run with it. I am a superstar (well not quite that, but I have tremendous potential. I am daily amazed by how far I’ve come in terms of profile building in the past 6 months. I’m getting links from all over, being quoted all over, and generally my ego is starting to bloat. It’s my job to keep that tempered. But at the same time, if I had realized the potential that I had when I started, I might have changed my approach to blogging. I might have executed differently. I could have been where I am today in December of 2004. I’d say to any blogger that they have tremendous possibility. Anytime a blog is started, there is a potential there waiting to be seen. It’s all in execution, dedication and beliving in ones self. Being confident enough to raise a fuss, but not obnoxious enough to be stupid. It’s those bloggers that succeed because, lets face it, it’s a tough world out here in the blogosphere and bloggers who don’t have thick skin aren’t going to make it big. But then going back to point 1, maybe “making it big” isn’t the goal and there is nothing wrong with that. It is mine though and to that end, I’d have done a whole lot differently.

This is a part of Darren’s Group Writing Project.

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About the Author: Aaron Brazell is the lead editor of Technosailor.com and a social media expert. His passion is to see companies and individuals use the internet and web technologies wisely and effectively to promote their brands and companies. He served as Director of Technology at b5media from 2005-2008 and is currently an independent consultant.