Imagine with me for a second that your friends want to go to the pool, but you have never gone swimming in your life. Your friends tell you it is easy, enjoyable, and a lot of fun. When you arrive at the pool, immediately they go jump into the deep end of the pool, and this pool’s deep end is ten feet deep. You are not so convinced, right? No. You start at the shallow end. You begin slow. You dip your toe in. Then, you put your feet in. Soon, you are up to your neck in water. You see your friends and the way they are moving their arms and legs, and you begin to copy their motions. You find it’s very easy to float, but you can only go where the flow of the water takes you. Learning to swim is a lot like trying to gain authority for your website. You see your friends blogging.
“That looks like the thing to do.” You think, but blogging and running a website can easily become frustrating when you have false expectations. Blogging looks easy from afar, but blogging is mostly just like anything else you want to do in life. It takes a little bit of effort. Let’s talk about some ways you can gain authority for your website through blogging.
It’s easy to float.
When it comes to blogging, it’s easy to just have a blog. You don’t do anything with it. You just float along. When people ask, you say, “Yes! I have a blog.” And you do, but what you may not realize is people are going to go find your blog whether you directed them to the blog or not. And when they find it, and you have not posted for a year, you are going to lose some trust/credibility. People see the old date, and they automatically think something like, “They must not really love what they do.” or “They must not care.”. Or maybe they were really excited to read your blog, because they love your business and want to know more. As you can imagine, this person-who is also a potential customer, mind you-who gets to your blog and is excited to read about your business is automatically disappointed when there is nothing on your blog but one post or your last blog post is as old as Moses.
Without consistency, you can only go where the flow takes you.
Blogging demands consistency. You need to think seriously about whether you are willing to devote a few hours each week starting out blogging. (You need to spend even more when you are keeping up with an entire website.) Blogging is worth doing, but like most other things, you have to write whether you feel like it or not. Consistency in blogging is required to gain authority for your website, or your blog is actually a detriment to your business. It may be discouraging to blog when you feel like no one is reading, but keep on investing more. Eventually, you will see the fruit of your efforts.
Authority for your website through blogging takes time and experience.
When you are swimming, you don’t jump off into the deep end without some experience, and experience comes when time is invested in actually doing what you are not used to doing. You will want to cling to the edge of the pool, but if you never shove off and give yourself a chance to try, you will never learn. Don’t be afraid. Don’t panic! Just keep swimming… Just keep swimming… What do we do? We…”???? “Okay, enough, Samantha! They get the idea!” You get the idea, right? Once you have been blogging for a while, you gain more authority when blogging, because you are more confident. Sometimes, confidence comes from falling hard a few times.. On your face. Success comes through failures and learning through those failures.
Be honest. You can’t swim.
Why? Because honesty wins trust, trust wins authority, and authority wins customers. Honesty is a win for you. Honesty cannot be your scapegoat, but it helps when you do not try to be someone you’re not and disappoint the customer. Be honest with yourself, and then, go learn from the best. You should also be honest with content you write on your blog. People want to connect with something real, and once they realize you aren’t being real with them, it’s an upstream swim gaining that trust back.
Blogging yields many benefits. It builds trust, gains authority, and wins customers.
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