One of the biggest lures for bloggers is to follow each and very trend.
John Saddington (aka Tentblogger) says you should post every day and so you do.
Pinterest is hot so you open an account and jump on the Pinterest wagon.
You read on a big blogging-blog that Slideshare brings in tons of traffic so you spend days coming up with a slideshow worth posting.
Michael Hyatt says you should be posting less and so you scale back.
In between you try your hand at creating your own infographics, your own memes, your own podcasts and of course writing you own e-book. Because that’s what everyone else is doing and apparently, that’s what works.
But does it really work?
Because all that time you’ve spent on following the latest trends, you haven’t spent on writing great blog posts.
If you are or want to be a graphics designer, then by all means, go ahead and create your own creative materials. If you want to become an expert on social media, than your time investment there is fully justified. If you want to break through as a writer, an e-book is a great idea.
But if you want to be a blogger, you’d better focus on blogging. All your hard work and investing in social media, techniques and methods to get more traffic are useless if there’s nothing worth coming back for on your site. Developing quality content has to be your number one priority, your biggest focus. Everything else has to come second.
Pick the trends you want to follow carefully. Ask yourself:
Does this really create added value or is it only a costly distraction from I really should be doing–which is blogging?
How do you decide which trends to follow?
[Editor’s Note: Be sure to read more awesome tips and tactics in the Focused Blogging series!]
Adam Shields says
I think a good question is whether the new trend helps or detracts from your content. I post to Pinterest because book reviews are fairly visual (you have a cover) and peoe often are searching and you can find a whole different set if readers than my regular Facebook and RSS feeds. But infigrafics do little to add to a book review blog. And I don’t know how to make them anyway.
Rachel Blom says
True, following trends in itself isn’t wrong as long as they support the goal(s) of your blog. I can imagine book reviews work well on Pinterest.
Raoul Snyman says
I’ve actually just been reading Michael Hyatt’s book “Platform” and it’s a really interesting read about blogging. I can see where I’m going wrong with my blog(s) and ways I can fix it. Just for the record, Michael Hyatt also advises blogging 5 times a week.
Rachel Blom says
He does give that advise in his book Platform (which is indeed a great and informative read), but two weeks ago he announced he had decided to blog less because a survey indicated that’s what his readers wanted. He now says blogging five times a week is probably advisable for new bloggers to gain an audience.
ThatGuyKC says
Way to call the trend chasers on the carpet. While I think it’s wise to follow in the footsteps of pros like Michael and John, if you’re not careful you can get lost in the details.