Notes and highlights for The Blogging Course Workbook¶
Link: Blogging Course Workbook
Highlights¶
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Many developers are afraid to commit to a specialty, because they are afraid that they’ll be severely limiting their options and they won’t get to work with all the fun technologies they like.
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rather than letting other people do it for you, you are going to pick your own label.
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The key here is to be very, very specific—at least at first. You can always expand later, but when you are starting out, it is critical that you have a very specific and narrow specialty that will be the theme of your blog.
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start big and then narrow your scope to just about as small as you can.
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Think about some area of software development that you think developers have problems with and that you could potentially provide them the best solution they have ever seen for that problem.
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The most important thing is to pick something and get started. Many software developers get stuck here and don’t move forward or they pick something too broad and they end up never getting traction with their blog.
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Learn about how to select a theme and how important it is to your success
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Actually select one today, so you’ll be ready to create an actual blog for the next lesson. (Remember lessons go out every Monday and Thursday.)
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We are going to move quickly here because inaction is the number one reason for failure.
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When you choose a theme for your blog, you are going to want your scope to be very narrow and focused. This is also called specialization or “niching down.”
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The idea is that you shouldn’t create a general blog about software development, but instead should create a blog that is much more specific to a targeted area of software development, technology or other smaller specialized topic.
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Creating my first software development blog was probably the single most profitable thing I ever did for my career.
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Shipping is important. Set yourself a time limit for writing a post and put it here. You will spend this amount of time on a post at max and then you will ship it no matter what.
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One thing that that helps with committing and being consistent is to set some timeframe and measurements in place. For example, when I go on a diet, I don’t imagine that I’ll have to eat that diet for the rest of my life. The same thing when I do a new workout program.
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Instead, I set a period of time that I am committing to and then, I say that I will reevaluate and either renew that commitment or change it at that time. So, do the same thing with your blog.
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You don’t have to commit to writing a post once a week for the rest of your life. Just commit to doing it for 6 months of even a year and then say that you’ll reevaluate after that.
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consistency and commitment are the two best tools you have to be successful.
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If you are willing to stick in there and keep blogging, you are eventually going to become successful and start seeing the real benefits of doing it, but you have to be the person who sticks with it if you want to succeed.
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As a blogger that has been blogging for years now, I can tell you that there will be times when you absolutely don’t want to blog. There will be times when you hate blogging and when you feel like you have absolutely nothing to say. So, be prepared for those times and have an extra post stored up that you can publish for that week so that you don’t break your commitment. Or just push through it and get something out there—even if you feel it’s not your best work.
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Whatever you do, don’t give up.
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There is nothing more important to making your blog successful—and useful to your career— than being consistent.
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nothing will kill your blog more than not being consistent.
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WHY CONSISTENCY IS SO IMPORTANT
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Consistency over time builds a large collection of blog posts, each of which is like a little magnet that has the potential to draw potential customers, clients, employers and fans to you.
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Consistency over time will improve your writing and communication skills in general. The more you write the better you get at it.
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On the other hand, if you have a blog that has 200 blog posts on it, because you wrote one blog post every week for 4 years, you are probably going to be getting a lot of traffic.
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I’m not going to lie to you, it might take you some time for your career to really start benefiting from creating a blog, but that is exactly why you should start now.
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Here is the thing. When I first started my blog I was a horrible writer. You may be reading these emails and thinking—dang, he STILL is a horrible writer—and that may very well be the case, but I’ve improved a great deal from some of my first blog posts.