Sifting through the archives the other day, I was reflecting a bit on how far this blog has come, and what I’ve learned along the way. And when I shared a few bits on Twitter, several folks asked if I’d share what I’ve learned.

First, it’s important for me to make a few things clear about my goals for blogging, because they’re likely different than yours, and it gives context to what I’ve been doing this for.

Why I Blog

One of my favorite quotes is from the writer Joan Didion, who once said “I write to discover what I think.”

In my case, that couldn’t be more true. I started blogging because I wanted to explore my own point of view on topics around communication, branding, and eventually the emergence of social media. More than anything, writing helps me work through ideas, find clarity, and find connections between threads. It has helped me establish an area of expertise, a personality and point of view, and work through ideas that interest me. Also? I love to write. Words are my chosen medium, so blogging is a natural fit for me.

I know some of you will roll your eyes when I tell you that traffic and subscribers were never a huge aim for me, but they weren’t. They’ve definitely become valuable along the way, because visibility has brought me opportunity, like jobs and speaking gigs and book deals. So I don’t discount them, and I value sustaining the growth, but I don’t obsess over analytics and I don’t do a lot of gerrymandering purposefully to improve my stats. I just write, and spend a little money on decent design.

I didn’t, for example, ever set up my blog for the purpose of generating revenue through ads or products, so my immediate goals were NOT centered around traffic or hits or anything of the sort. I just wanted to start creating content that could form a basis for other things (like my then-consulting services). And that content has had the residual benefits I’d hoped for in terms of establishing me as an authoritative voice in my industry.

It’s also worth noting that I write in social media about social media. Which is a bit of a jolt, because social media people love to read about social media. So the natural content consumers, creators, and sharers are a big part of my audience (the rest is the more mainstream corporate management/exec type). That has most certainly made it easier to create a visible blog in a very nascent industry. If you’re writing about lapidary work or illuminated calligraphy, you might find that there’s a much smaller niche for that and your results will be relative.

So, here’s a bit of a rundown of what I’ve learned through the blogging adventure.

1. Consistency Counts.

I used to hate the idea that I needed to write regularly, or to adhere to some kind of schedule. Some people still get hives when you say that, preferring to focus on the “write when you have something to say” mantra. I think both are true.

I definitely write more passionately when I have something to say, but the practice of writing is equally important in cultivating a voice and a body of work overall. Getting good at writing for an audience means creating some cohesion, and it’s hard to do that in fits and starts. Sometimes, you can accomplish that by writing even if you don’t publish.

If traffic and eyeballs are a goal you have however, my experience (read: stats) also says that writing and publishing consistently and regularly makes a positive difference in that regard. My sweet spot is about 3 posts per week, but you’ll have to test yours to see what works best for you since there ain’t no secret formula here.

But writing is a discipline, honestly. If you have aims to use your writing as a vehicle to something else – work, leads, speaking gigs, book deals, advocacy – you have to work at it to make it good. And the only way to work at it is to do it. A lot.

2. Sometimes Blogging Sucks.

Not every moment of blogging is bliss. That’s just the way of it.

If you can think of your blog more as a ground for adventure and experimentation instead of gospel, that’ll go down a bit easier. But you’ll have clunkers. You’ll have posts you look back on months (or years) later as cringe-worthy. You’ll piss someone off, you’ll contradict yourself, you’ll get absolute crickets for the post you were convinced was your masterpiece.

You’ll get critiques from your closest friends and complete strangers, and some of them will sting. You will hit a wall or a dry spell, and you won’t want to write anymore at all. It’s all part of the game, and so many factors contribute to it.

That’s why #1 above is important. The more you work at it, the more you find what works and what doesn’t, and you’ll shove yourself through the rough spots. You can write once a month and figure it out eventually, but it’ll take a lot longer to do.That’s your choice.

But the universal truth is that blogging is like every other pursuit. There are ups, there are downs, and they’re both important to creating a complete picture. If you’re lucky, you’ll learn something from both.

3. Know What You’re In It For.

Some people blog to make money. Some write for ego and attention. Some people blog to rally people to a cause. Some (like me) write to express and explore ideas. Some write to publish their work or exercise their creativity. They’re all perfectly fine objectives.

Your audience will be different depending on your goals, so will your approach, your success rate, and how much work and effort it takes. But whatever your aims, know what they are. That way your decisions can always be measured against those aims to see if they line up, and you’ll know when you’re off the reservation.

4. Capture Ideas Everywhere.

One of the most common roadblocks bloggers face – and the one that often leads to giving up – is a lack of inspiration. You just run out of things to say, or you think you do.

One thing that’s helpful to me is having a way to capture fleeting post ideas whenever the inspiration strikes. I happen to love Evernote because of its translation across phone, iPad, and laptop. But I also think things like Dragon Dictation could come in handy. I scribble in my Moleskine, and have even been known to use my daughter’s bathtub crayons to scrawl something on the shower wall if it hits me then. Whatever it takes.

At present, I have about 112 blog post ideas in varying stages of draft in my Evernote folder. Some are just titles or ideas. Others are partially written drafts. Others are photos, or clips from other articles that inspired another thought. I may or may not ever get to them, and I delete drafts that I go back to later and make me think “meh”. But if I’m in writing mode and I don’t have a topic immediately to mind, I *always* manage to find something in my drafts folder that seems to fit my mood.

5. Your Content Will Evolve.

That’s part of the idea.

You may start in one direction, and end up somewhere else. Your posts will mature, your voice will change and settle in, you’ll find new things you’re passionate about and you’ll frequently question your own direction. You’ll write lots of list posts, then you’ll hate them. You’ll go crazy with the latest blogging meme, then you’ll be a purist all over again. You’ll sit and stare at the screen and wonder if you’ve lost your edge, and you’ll try something different. Some of those things will fail, some will be wildly awesome. You’ll get newly inspired by something you’d never known about before. You might try different types of content, or different subject matter altogether.

When you change stuff, it might be just a tweak in direction, or a complete overhaul of your blog from the ground up. You might come full circle, and find that where you started was where you wanted to be after all. It’ll happen. It’s all part of the adventure. Content isn’t an absolute, it’s dynamic. As it should be. That’s what keeps us – and you – interested and engaged.

6. It’s a Long Haul.

So, three years it’s been for Brass Tacks. And it’s a fairly successful blog that’s gained a bit of recognition, though I’m no superstar.

But at the beginning, it took me six months of blogging, several times per week, to really find the start of my footing. (Keep in mind that’s also after having THREE other blogs in past worlds that ended up nowhere). And by footing I mean starting to establish a clear focus, a unique voice, a sense of confidence, and yes, some regular attention that stuck around for a while. That’s when other people started to share my content. Comment more. Send other people over to check things out. That kind of thing.

And you know what?

It still needs my attention. Blogs don’t coast. You can’t just set it and forget it. You’ve got to keep feeding the machine, keeping it fresh, devoting your attention to it. It’s like a relationship, really, with your blog. Once you get it moving, you’ve got to *keep* it moving, or it stagnates and even dies on the vine. If you don’t care about momentum or lack thereof, then by all means, do it or stop doing it for a while, or whatever you feel like. But if a long-term, thriving, authoritative blog is something you’re striving for, it’s not an overnight thing, and you’ve gotta keep it going.

7. No One Is Making You Do This.

You don’t have to blog. And if you don’t want to blog, you’re better off not doing it.

I enjoy writing. It’s part of me, which makes blogging something I enjoy, not something I dread. Sure, it helps me from a business perspective, but if I hated it, I’m not at all sure I’d keep doing it. There’s not a universal law that says you have to have a blog. You’re not a victim of social media pressure, either, you’re in control. If you can’t find an approach to blogging or a topic that motivates you to keep wanting to do it, that’s a problem. And you’ve got to figure out why you’re beating your head against the wall.

Why? First of all, we can tell. If your content is created because of some sense of obligation, it’ll read that way. Second, there are far too many other things you could do to make an impact on your work and life that DO motivate you, so why burn energy on something that doesn’t?

If you hate blogging, you have my permission to quit doing it. Or change gears completely, nuke your blog, and start over (no unicorns will die if you do that, I promise, even if you’re famous). Unless it’s a requisite of your job, then I want to talk to your boss about why they’re giving that job to *you*.

8. Quit Comparing Yourself. And Forget This Post.

Oh, how many times I would look over my shoulder at the other bloggers I was supposed to emulate, or want to be like. I would read copious amounts of content about how to make my blog better and get myself all wrapped around the axle about everything from plugins to what lists I was on to how long a post should be and whether I should follow some kind of secret writing formula.

And then I realized the truth: the only universal constant of blogging is that there is none.

For everything I’ve learned and say works for me? Your success might be found in the opposite. For as much as I’m not focused on blogging for traffic, plenty of people have it down to a science and make good money doing it. I’ve questioned my own ways, changed them, gone back again. Taken advice, ignored it, adhered to some of the rules and broken many, many more.

The only thing that seems to really matter is that I keep working hard to write stuff that people want to read and that also feels like stuff I want to write. Somewhere in the middle, good stuff happens. Much of it probably unlikely to be instructed in a blog post, ironically enough. Be ok with forging your own path rather than following the one someone else laid.

Your Turn

I’d love to hear what you’ve learned, whether you’ve been blogging for a month or a decade. And if you’re blogging, are these obvious? Are they things you know are reassuring to hear anyway? Were there any surprises?

The hard part about these “lessons” posts is that some of these things might seem obvious, but aren’t to everyone, so someone may just find the encouragement they need to write or keep writing, and that’s worth a bunch. At the same time, it can feel really unoriginal to share a bunch of stuff that doesn’t feel very groundbreaking at all.

So, some of you asked and I answered. And if there’s something that I can weigh in on in the comments that I didn’t think of here, I’d love to do so. Hope it was helpful. Share what you’ve learned, too?

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
8 Lessons Learned from The Long Blogging Road

I need to drive my writing into places it hasn’t been before, and head into more uncharted territory, at least for me. All these ideas aren’t fully baked yet, but I definitely know deep down that it’s the right direction for me to take.

It’s also forced me to make peace with something:

My blog might be a lot quieter.

Not because I’m going to stop writing – far from it. But perhaps because the things I want to write about might not be the same as they used to be.

Getting crunchier with posts, at least most of the time, will likely mean that they’re sometimes raw and unfinished. They’re not all going to be immediately actionable or instructive. Some might be really fluffy, some might end up dense as fruitcake. I’m hopeful that they’ll stir a bunch of thought for myself and for all of you that read, but they might not always be comment fodder. I suppose some of that depends on how they strike you, it’s certain not to be a rousing string of comments on the bane of Twitter auto DMs or the like.

I’m not likely to stay on the top rungs of the AdAge Power 150, or make a ton of awesome blog lists. I might not get thousands of retweets, or get interviewed on all the best blogs and podcasts, or grace the ranks in industry publications.

And I think I’m okay with all of this.

Once upon a time, I started writing this blog because I needed a place to think out loud as I’m wont to do.  And I want to do that again. I can honestly say that I never wrote for traffic or subscribers, because those simply weren’t my immediate goals, they were a happy by-product of putting effort into writing.

There is no question that the success of this blog helped me land work when I was a consultant, and secure speaking invitations, and the opportunity to write a book that was the start of a lot of the ideas I’m going to dig into more. All of these have impacted my career for the better without a doubt, and I am immensely grateful for all of them. I take none of that for granted.

But things have to change sometimes as our perspective does. And because I want to explore new and different things through my blogging, at least to me, there are bound to be tradeoffs. And only now, at this point in my career landscape, am I comfortable with what that might mean.

So, please forgive the very “me” focused tone of this post, but I’m writing it for a reason, because there’s something I want you to hear.

I am terrified.

I am at an exhilarating, overwhelming crossroads in my professional life – including this blog – that holds amazing opportunities of a thousand different kinds. I have no idea how I’ll fare with the vast new topics I want to tackle, or what voice I can lend to them. In my calmer moments, I am incredibly excited because I can feel the electricity around me, the sense that there are big shifts happening that I’ll look back on years from now and be able to point to as completely pivotal. In my weaker ones, I am petrified of failing.

And when you’re contemplating making a big change or taking on a bold new direction? It’s okay if you are too.

Change of any kind is scary. Staring it in the face takes courage, and choosing to do something different – whatever that means for you – takes more still, especially if that change might have consequences. But it’s important for me to tell you, as a very dear friend reminded me recently, that we’re all scared out here. We make like we aren’t. But we are, which means you’re not alone in that. Fear can tell you you’re onto something. And I know from experience that it can help to hear that fear isn’t something unique to you.

So, let’s take a deep breath. I know I might be trading some things in by taking my writing in some different directions, but I also know that something awesome and worthwhile is bound to come out the other side.

I hope you do, too.

Updated 1/3 for some clarity, since I had Mitch Joel thinking I wasn’t going to blog anymore. Whoops.

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Getting Comfortable with Quiet…and Fear.

I’m also incredibly excited to become a real-live published author myself (which is decidedly better than a real dead one). And because I’m fortunate to work in a vibrant area of business these days, I’m often sent books by other authors because they’re looking for people to do book reviews on their blog.

I’ve always struggled with this for a few reasons. First off, blog posts are fleeting. Yeah, I know they have a shelf life through links and such, but they’re still a bit more transient and detached than a more permanently curated resource. I most certainly still find many of them valuable and I’m sure Jay and I will share our upcoming book with the blogging community in some way. But for my own blog, something more enduring seemed more helpful.

Second, I’m weird, but I don’t enjoy being the critic. If I don’t particularly care for a book, I’d rather just recommend a useful one instead rather than picking apart the flaws and shortcomings of another one. It’s the constructive heretic in me, I guess. I know lots of others are wired differently, and I think that’s great. But Brass Tack Thinking is all about making things happen, so it felt like we needed something more useful and practical that focused on what to read rather than what not to read.

So emerged a different idea.

Brass Tack Reading

Tamsen and I are going to build out a section here on the blog called Brass Tack Reading. It’ll be our recommended reading list, and a more comprehensive resource of the books that we find useful or valuable for a variety of reasons. We’re often asked what resources we recommend, so now we can keep them all in one place, point people there, and maintain the whole thing ongoing. Plus, if you find a listing for one book, you might be able to find others in our list that interest you, too.

This also helps us address one of the key objections most blog reviews get: that they’re just being posted as favors or a quid pro quo, or that there are only ever positive reviews, or whatever else you can imagine. From the very start, it’ll only be a list of books we’ve read and that we’d recommend to others. No bones about it. These are books we like. We’ll tell you why. Some will undoubtedly be those written by friends. Some will be must-have classics. Some will be books you’ve never heard of. But no matter what, they come with our official BTT seal (tack?) of approval.

Our list is under construction right now, so stay tuned. It’ll likely start with the business/personal development kind of books, but who knows. Maybe we’ll branch out someday and include some of the fiction or pleasure reading we love, too.

Have a Book We Should Consider?

We’re always happy to hear about new books or even old books that need a revisit. If you’ve got a book you’d like us to consider for the BTR list, just drop an email to either or both of us (our emails are in the sidebar over there to the right).

The deal is: we don’t promise reviews. If we find the book valuable, we’ll write up a synopsis and our thoughts, and post it on the list. Whatever links we include will be the choice of the author or, in absence of that, a non-affiliate link to the Amazon listing for the book. This isn’t a money-making venture for us, but simply a way to share resources with our community. If we’ve been given the book as a review copy (vs. something we’ve purchased for ourselves), we’ll disclose that every time.

So Stay Tuned.

Brass Tack Reading will be posted here in the next couple of weeks with an initial selection of books, and we’ll add to them over time. We’re really looking forward to sharing our love for books, learning, and reading with you, and hope you’ll let us know what books you have found valuable in your life and work.

After all, the best books are often the ones that a friend recommends, right?

Read on.

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Coming Soon: Brass Tack Reading