Everybody needs a friend.
We really can’t do life without them.
And that includes bloggers too. And creating value as blogger earns you friends.
With just the laptop for company and umpteen hours behind the small screen, bloggers could do with some bigging up and support. It can be a lonely existence tapping away on the keyboard day after day, so a friendly face and a few kind words, even if they are only comments on a post with a gravatar picture to match, can prove food to the writer’s soul.
But friendship is a two lane street – it goes both ways. What you give is what you get and the blogosphere is no different.
Blogship is friendship so its best to be a blogger buddy and not a blogger bum.
So, if you’re not sure of the difference between the two, here’s the low down on whether you are a friend or foe when you log on and blog on.
Blogger Buddy.
This person represents blogging and contribution at it best. Here’s what they do:-
- Regularly post consistently high quality content designed to inform, advise, help, and solve problems in a particular niche or field.
- Visit and read other blogs in a similar sphere leaving comments and opinion to back up and support the host blogger adding value with their words and thoughts.
- Develop respected connections with other bloggers including via e-mail and on social media where they share their posts and products to a wider audience, all with a positive angle and ‘don’t-miss-this-it’s-ace’ ethic.
- Invite other bloggers to write guest posts for their blog and happily reciprocate if asked only ever creating the same excellent work for others as they do for their own site.
- Are an active participant in blog forums and online communities, even attending live events, happily offering their insight and the pitfalls they’ve experienced so everyone can gain and not make the same mistakes.
- Feel a good reputation is worth having any day rather than climbing all over people to be a success.
- Is prepared to work at it not just aiming for or expecting overnight success, being keen to get respect and recognition for amazing content from peers and the public alike, even if it takes years.
Blogger buddies are the cement in the blogosphere bricks and the very foundations that the blogging world has successfully been built upon. They are warm and approachable and are team players wanting everyone to be a winner.
Does that sound like you? Or could you actually be the dreaded Blogger Bum?
Blogger Bum
This person is only out for themselves and is the ‘I’ in Internet. They don’t want friends, they want something else like somewhere to make money, mischief, or moronic statements.
This is some of what they get up to:-
- Writing very average non structured content as well as cobbling together other people’s blog posts and claiming them as their own, all on an intermittent basis.
- Posts often speak about how great they are, their awesome work and what success they have achieved, the money they are raining in, plus what brilliant things they are about to do next that you should get involved with. In other words; me, me, me!
- Guest posts aren’t welcome or encouraged on their blog as it takes traffic away, but they chase down other bloggers for a slice of their action, often in a very coarse fashion.
- They rarely comment on other blogs except to boast about their profile and to leave links to their site, upcoming book sale, or a selected affiliate they want plugging to earn oodles of bucks from.
- Forums and communities are hated by them as it’s about giving and they are about taking. Why help others when you can help yourself?
- They have few good blogger relationships as their selfish attitude leaves a trail of bad feeling and negative feedback from experiencing their behaviour and actions.
Blogger bums knock down the walls others work hard to build in and for the online blogging neighbourhood. They trash for cash or speak out simply to freak out people, their only concern being their own welfare and what’s-in-it-for-me. The only person that matter is them as they wage a one man (or woman) war to win at all costs.
So there it is – which one are you?
Tough question perhaps but take a rain check and check out your online activity today.
It’s worth taking time to truly figure this out because there’s more to blogging than being first, just as there’s more to friendship than taking first.
You can be a blogger buddy and do the write stuff, or be a blogger bum stuffing it up wherever you go.
Your blogging personality is your personal statement to the world, so which one are you making?