How To Split An Atom

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In the last several months of exploration of the blogosphere I have picked up some lessons that I think any burgeoning blogger should take to heart. As always, chances are these lessons alone will do nothing to make you the next Robert Scoble but they will help you smooth over some of the frustration you might be feeling as your blog gets off the ground.

Since top five lists are just so Web 1.0, I am going to go with a top six list.

Tips

“The Digg Effect”. Digg is a traffic firehose. Chances are good that by using it you will get a huge amount of very shallow traffic. Digg users are usually quite set in their ways, they hate what they view as trends and they are most likely to lash out violently at your work. There are many of them, however, who do provide constructive content. The lesson, if you use Digg get thick skin — you’ll need it.

Everything Counts. Every email that you return promptly, every comment that you leave on someone’s site, every blog post that you write counts. The nature of any creative enterprise is that you can never predict what will be successful. Most of my best posts have come from putting in the work and then being in the right place at the right time.

Stumble It. StumbleUpon, Web 2.0’s answer to channel surfing is probably the best source of traffic you could ask for. It produces deep, lasting traffic and generally draws a crowd that is genuinely interested in your content. If you don’t already have the toolbar installed, read this article.

Don’t Be Intimidated. I don’t care whether it is your first day writing for a blog, or you 20th year as a professional journalist. If there is one piece of advice to hold onto it is not to be intimidated. People, no matter how famous, are only people and the worse that they can do to you is say no. If you have a request, question or concern for a “big name” don’t be embarrassed to send it in. Chances are they will appreciate the candor.

Find Your UVP. Find your unique value proposition. What can you do that no one else is doing, or what can you do better than it is currently being done. If you have ever asked yourself a question starting with, “I wish someone would…” then you probably have a UVP in mind. Despite what you might think, there are plenty of niches to be filled and you might be just to person to fill one of them.

Be Creative. Twitter, Jaiku, Digg, StumbleUpon, Blog Carnivals, Guest Blogging, Comment Posting, Email Signature Lines, MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, NewsVine, all of these are methods you can use to increase your reader base and improve your traffic. Get to know these services and come up with other creative means of gaining exposure. You have to be willing to think outside of the box, people aren’t just going to come to you.

Web 2.0 Roundup

My final tip comes as a bonus and that is to remember that content is king. If you love a topic, write about it passionately. If you care about that topic, show off your skills by submitting your posts everywhere you can. If you can’t evangelize for your body of work, no one else will do it for you.

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