Category Archives: Blogging

Blogging

Watch Your Relations With Other People Carefully, Be Reserved

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Watch Your Relations With Other People Carefully, Be Reserved

Watch Your Relations With Other People Carefully, Be Reserved

I’m going to take liberties in today’s FortunateBluFrog post and change relations to relationships, I’m sure that is what the fortune means. Because I’m pretty sure I’m not out having “relations” with other people.

How Does This Relate to Blogging?

This one is pretty funny because it pretty much is the opposite of what you should do to be a successful blogger. Or at least that is what many people would lead you to beleive. Maybe if you were a bit more reserved online in your relationships with other people then you might be a little more successful.

That’s Crazy Talk

It seems that to be a success you have to continually shout from the rafters about your product. In blogging that means your blog. So if you aren’t constantly promoting your blog on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Stumble and the 20,000 other platforms then your blog will not become noticed.

With Everyone Shouting, Who is Listening?

And this is the problem with getting noticed in the blogging arena. You don’t get noticed because there is always someone who has a louder voice. In my own life I’m a pretty quiet guy, my friends and my family are all (for the most part) talkers. I’m a listener. I rarely speak unless I have something to contribute. I take the Silent Bob approach. I watch everything boil it down to the essentials and let you know what I think. Usually it is something funny or profound, mostly it is just something to contribute.

Are You Making a Contribution That Matters?

Are you actually making a contribution or are you just adding to the general noise. Sometimes Twitter makes me think of the seagull scene in Finding Nemo. Each bird just screaming Mine, Mine, Mine. That’s what I see much of the time on twitter. I think overall the hyping of blogs on twitter is going to run its course like everything else. If you are not making an actual contribution to the conversation you are going to end up out of the conversation by default. I guess you might want to take this fortune to heart and be a tad more reserved online. Work on your posts and craft them well find a few people to read them who will tell other people to read them. If your content is sound and worth it then it doesn’t matter how loud other people scream “Mine” people will seek out “Yours”.

Blogging

First Think of What You Want to do Then do What you Have to do.

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First Think of What You Want to Do Then Do What you Have to Do

First Think of What You Want to do Then do What you Have to do.

I think I’m going to have to go back to the Chinese take Out place where I bought these fortune cookies because they rock for my FortunateBluFrog posts.

Think of What you WANT to Do

There will always be things that you WANT to do. Call in sick to play Wii all day long on a rainy day. Eat an entire container of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream during a Buffy marathon. Buy that expensive car, take out another credit card or tell people what you REALLY think. However, each one of those things is going to bring down a world of hurt on you, maybe not immediately but eventually. You’re not going to be able to always do what you want to do.

Then Do What You HAVE to Do

When I think of this part of the fortune I equate HAVE with NEED. There are things that you NEED to do in life. You need to earn money to support your family so calling in sick to often might lead to loss of income. You need to watch what you eat and also need to exercise to maintain a quality of life. People always say that you have to exercise to live a long life. I’m not so thrilled with the prospect of a long life if that means shuffling around the nursing home waiting for death.

However, I’d like to have a good quality of life, I’d like to maintain a healthy body so that I can continue to function without debilitating disease. Of course now that I’ve been living with diabetes for a while hindsight is 20/20. Your mind goes to the place of, could I have prevented this, why are people who are much more unhealthy than me not affected by this disease? But you can’t look at things that way either because it will just make you more angry and upset. So you do what you NEED to. You eat better, you watch your sugars, you learn about the disease and you exercise.

What does this fortune mean for Bloggers?

You might want to head right to twitter or facebook when you start out your day rather than work on that post that you need to complete. You might want to spend time playing facebook games instead of reading blog posts and commenting. You might want to put off moving to WordPress when blogspot works just fine. All of these wants aren’t going to move you forward to success. If you have a task to complete then you need to shut out all distractions and complete it, first. We all know how important keeping contact with people on twitter and facebook is to social networking but it can consume you and take time away from writing the bests posts you can write. It can rob you of time spent visiting other blogs and interacting with other bloggers and their posts. You need to complete those things first that will bring you success. The rest can be done after.

For the season of Lent I gave up facebook games. I would spend hours playing them. I neglected some blogging while I did so and I certainly needed to stop. So for 40 days I gave up playing. No Mafia Wars, no Street Racing, nothing. And you know what, I feel more creative and less like I need to spend forever playing catch up with the blog.

Are you doing the things that you NEED to do so that you are able to do the things that you WANT to do?