Blogging Truths Be Told: Blogging Requires You to Drop the Ego

I hate to tell you this if you didn’t already know, but the blogging scene isn’t ALL about YOU. I mean some of it’s about you, but you’re just a water droplet in the huge body of water known as the blogosphere. 

Kind of harsh, don’t you think?

Well, I don’t mean to offend; I’m just aiming to be as bloggingly truthful as I know how to be. And, this lesson today is one that I learned quickly and continue to experience each and every day.

Here’s the deal: I’ve never been a fan of the highly egotistical. And let me just preface that statement by addressing the fact that all of us have somewhat of an ego about certain aspects of ourselves. So, I’m not knocking displaying some noteworthy self-esteem in the right context. Trying to cater to our needs and appreciating what we’ve got going for us are natural instincts if they’re used for good and in a way that doesn’t infringe on or belittle another person’s worth.

But, straight egos that seek to disregard all those around him or her have to go. They don’t work here in this online space we inhabit.

And specifically speaking, regarding blogging, listen up ALL NEWBIES! Your self-worth better not be tied up in experiencing instantaneous blogging success, measured by regular readership, growth in all the numbers, and substantial income earning capabilities, allowing you to retire from the regular 9 to 5 (all within the first several months of starting your blog). 

Why?

Because, you will be humbled pretty quickly and this is the truth and nothing but for most bloggers out there. After all, I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that “if blogging was so easy and everyone could gain instant success at it, then everyone would be doing it.” Don’t you think? Makes sense to me. But the reality of the matter is that blogging is HARD WORK. It’s work, people. And there’s no way to sugar coat that.

And, you will get humbled at some point in your blogging journey, when you realize that the results are not materializing as quickly as you’d like them to. It’s just inevitable that you will. You’ll go through dry spells where you’ll ask questions and dialogue with yourself; and it’ll go a little something like . . . 

• Why isn’t anyone reading my blog? I’m putting out really choice content and no one’s even reading it. I know there has to be someone out there who’s interested in what I’m posting for the world to see. So, where are they at?
• How do people make money at this? I can’t even get people to take the content that I’m freely giving away.
• In this whole big World Wide Web, you would think someone would land on my blog. How is it that I can go days without any views on my site. Hellooooooooo, is anybody out there?
• Is the Internet broken? Let me refresh the screen a bajillion times, because the Internet has to be broken. Okay, so the Internet can’t be broken, but there has to be some technical issue that’s keeping people from finding my blog. That’s gotta be what’s going on.
• I’m so tired of seeing no progress. What am I even doing this for? Seriously, I could be spending my time on something else that’s actually serving my ego. WAIT! What?

No, no no! Not the old ego cropping up again.

Blogging is not designed to serve the ego, so you might want to check the ego lingo at the door. If anything, blogging is what I like to lovingly refer to as a “servant” role. You, as the blogger, are providing a service to others. And others don’t owe you their time, consideration, or money until you’ve earned their respect, loyalty, and trust.

But be warned. It can take you a long time to earn that type of a mutually-beneficial relationship — a reciprocal, two-way relationship that requires you to provide a service (valuable blogging content) to your readership and your readership to provide their interaction and communication with you and your content through views, follows, comments, emails, purchases, etc.

These “Blogging Truths Be Told” lessons are coming from The University of the Painful Truth and they’re meant to help soften the blow to those aspects of blogging that might take you by surprise if you let them. So, don’t let them. Educate yourself on the struggles that you could possibly (and more often than not) go through in order to reach blogging success. 

I don’t mean to sound cliché (or blatantly pessimistic, for that matter), but you might want to adopt the mindset to plan for the worst and hope for the best when it comes to your blogging early on in your content creation journey. Blogging reality has taught me that much. And even when you become seasoned, it’s no time to bring the old ego in because you think you’ve earned the right to, based on your stellar blogging statistics, experience and blogging tenure, or the hard knocks you’ve experienced during content creation battles. 

Just know that your blog is successful because your readers make it so. And with that being said, you have to offer people what they want (not just what you want and “No Reader Consideration Allowed”). You have to meet people where they are and with what they need. And, if where people are and what they need is aligned with what you enjoy serving up, then you’ve got that mutually-beneficial relationship thingy going on. Sounds like an egoless undertaking if I’ve ever heard one.

So, let me end with how I started this blog post. “I hate to tell you this if you didn’t already know, but the blogging scene isn’t ALL about YOU. I mean some of it’s about you” . . . but your effectiveness at it and longevity with it will hinge on you recognizing the importance of the audience (current and future) supporting it.