I recorded a short video on Twitter recently.
One idea popped into my mind: do successful bloggers focus on developing skills or attaching to specific strategies?
In truth, we all use clear strategies to succeed. But bloggers err in trying to force specific strategies – like building an email list or SEO optimizing blog posts – to spit out success, in their direction. Nope. Blogging does not work that way. Skilled bloggers succeed. Bloggers become skilled by practicing for a long time. Practicing for a long time requires patience, persistence, generosity and a willingness to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Strategies yield success only because skilled bloggers make strategies sing. Imagine being a new blogger. You have absolutely no idea how to build an email list. Zero subscribers sign up for your list over the first 3 months of your blogging career. Did list-building fail you as a strategy? Of course not. No one signed up for your list because you have not the blogging and list-building skills yet to net subscribers. You have not the writing practice to gain reader trust. Nor do you know how to capture email leads because you simply do not possess the practice, experience and skills to boost your subscriber base from zero, yet.
Welcome to the club!
Every new blogger needs to practice to become skilled enough to make any strategy yield success. Strategies are worthless unless a skilled blogger works strategies. Observe any SEO-optimizing pro like Neil Patel or Brian Dean. For all of their page 1 success, most bloggers never sniff page 1. Did SEO fail most bloggers? Nope. Most bloggers failed SEO. Most bloggers did not practice, create and connect for 1000s of hours like Neil Patel and Brian Dean. Each pro developed skills to work SEO optimizing strategies successfully. The strategy itself did not passively drive millions of visitors to both sites, like some kind, benevolent, search engine fairy. Both of those bloggers worked!
I feel tired now. I intended to go to sleep 20 minutes ago but felt urged to write and submit this guest post. Why will I write, proofread and submit the 600 guest post in 14 minutes flat? Does the strategy of guest posting make it happen? Nope. Ryan Biddulph writing tens of millions of words over 12 years makes it happen. I spent 10,000 plus hours blogging over 12 years to develop skills to the point where I write, proofread and either submit or publish 600 word blog posts in 14 to 20 minutes. I worked for a long time to become skilled enough to churn out helpful content in a short amount of time. No strategy allowed me to do this. My practice, my skills and my full on commitment to blogging for a long time brought about these talents.
Never look to a strategy to do what only you can do. Strategies are useless, worthless and meaningless unless skilled bloggers patiently work strategies generously for a long time. Of course, being skilled often means making mistakes, struggling and sometimes failing for a bit before you work strategies successfully. Every pro was once an amateur. Every skilled blogger was once unskilled before the blogger practiced for a long time.
None of these concepts seem like rocket science in the offline world but the online world deludes people. If I told a carpenter to allow a framework strategy to do its work solo to lay the frame for a building, this person would look at me like I'm nuts. *Carpenters* lay the framework by skillfully working certain strategies. Yet bloggers seem dumbfounded when list-building or SEO-optimizing “does not work for them”. Of course neither works *for* them. You work the strategy! You, your practice and your skills allow you to work any blogging strategy successfully, or, unsuccessfully, depending upon your time and energy commitment.
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