Reflections On Two Years Of Blogging: Lessons Learned

My first post on The Creative Penn was Dec 3, 2008 so I have just hit my 2 year anniversary. Hoorah! Here are some of the things I have learned along the way, and my commitment to you moving forward.

• Passion drives blogging so choose your niche carefully. My very first post on publishing 2.0 is still the driving force behind the blog. I am crazy passionate about writing, publishing and book marketing in a digital age where anything is possible. This passion means I never run out of ideas to blog about and learning is a pleasure. There is little reward in the first 6+ months of blogging so if you aren't passionate about your niche, you won't sustain the effort needed to make a success of it. If you blog on what you love, the reward is intrinsic. You enjoy the topic and the process, so you persist and become successful over time. This is my third blog. The other two fell by the wayside within months because I had no passion for them, but we all have to start somewhere!

• Understand your brand and what you want to build for the long term. Personal branding fascinates me especially as many authors want to write across multiple genres. If you can create a community around you and your interests, then your audience will follow over time into the different directions you may follow. If you create a brand around one book, you will find that harder to sustain as your interests change. Branding may take a while to bed down but it's best to choose what you want to focus on, then be authentic in sharing around that brand. Remember to stick to your niche. Consistency is important. For example, I love scuba diving but I don't share stories of dive sites because that doesn't relate to my writing brand. I can mention it now and then but if I talk about it too much, you won't come back!

• Become an expert along the way. People often say to me that they can't start a blog because they aren't an expert yet. But you can blog your lessons learned along the way. People connect with people and they love to learn along with you. I learned this from Yaro Starak at Entrepreneur's Journey. The Creative Penn is a writer's journey through the tangled web of writing, publishing and promotion. I have blogged my first novel openly this year and ‘Pentecost' will be out in February 2010. I have also learned so much about online marketing for authors and now get paid to speak on it. When I started, I knew very little so I have learned along the way. You can too. Invest in building your skills. Start learning and start blogging!

• Bloggers are brilliant and I am proud to call myself one. Bloggers are a fabulous community of intelligent, generous and talented people. I have made some incredible friends in the last two years and many whose blogs have grown at the same time as mine. Connecting with people who are at the same level as you is great because you can network and rise together. Bloggers are now some of the closest friends I have, even though I haven't physically met most of them. I now define myself as a blogger and if I won the lottery I would still blog. I love to be useful and help people, I love the community, I love the expression. So as you blog, also connect. Podcasting interviews has been a great way of doing this for me.

• Use your own domain name and hosting. By all means, start on a free blog site like WordPress.com but move onto a hosted site that you own as soon as you decide to take blogging seriously. The top-ranked blogs are on their own domains and it also means you have the control to do whatever you like with your site. There is no risk of being shut down or your site disappearing. Invest your time building quality for the future.

• Be useful and focus on what others want. This is the key to driving traffic and achieving better rankings. Posts that receive the most inbound links contain useful, actionable information and examples that help people e.g. how to write a back blurb for your book. One of the biggest problems with many blogs is that they are too focused on the individual.  Think about turning a personal post into something others can action and still insert some of your own personality.

• Focus and commitment will speed up the journey. I often get asked how I find time to blog, tweet, facebook, speak and network as well as do a day job, find time to write – oh yes, and have a life! I have blogged on finding time but my keys are working four days a week, having no TV and very little social life. I am driven by a passion to change my own life from IT consultant to professional writer, blogger and speaker. Career change takes a lot of effort and this is not a hobby for me. I am serious about what I am doing. I spent my 20s and early 30s without a real goal. Now I have one, I am pursuing it with all my focus and commitment so I give up the other things happily!

My Commitment To You

I started blogging as a marketing exercise for my first book but it has become much more than that to me. I define myself as an author, blogger and speaker and so this site becomes an integral part of my personal brand and my life. I share some of my biggest challenges here and regular readers/listeners would know my mind more intimately than many of my ‘physical' friends, certainly on the topic of writing at least!

I also love to help people and by the emails, tweets and comments I receive, it seems that the blog enables me to do this effectively.

So, my commitment to you going forward is:

• To provide useful, actionable information every 2-3 days on writing, publishing options and book marketing through blog posts, audio interviews and increasingly, on video.
• To answer your email questions, tweets or Facebook questions as best I can in a timely manner
• To be honest and authentic with my own struggle and writing journey so you can save time, money and heartache through my lessons learned

Thank you for visiting the blog over the last two years and I hope you stay with me as The Creative Penn moves into its third year!
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