Born to Blog
We talk a lot about inbound and content marketing here on this blog. Of course the center of an inbound strategy often revolves around a blog. Many of us read popular blogs every day from Mashable to Gini Dietrich's Spin Sucks to HuffPo to Mark Schaefer's {Grow} blog. The question of course then becomes how do you build your own online presence? And how do you build it to the point to see both business and personal growth? Today, we reconnect with previous Brand Fast-Tracker Mark Schaefer and talk about his new book Born to Blog (cowritten with Pushing Social's Stanford Smith). One of my favorite things about the book is how simply it is laid out. It's an easy read, and even easier to follow and take action for your own blog. For readers of The Tao of Twitter: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time, the feel and format of the book will be really familiar to you.  I know I took a lot of the advice to heart in terms of this very blog and our new corporate BC CONNECT blog. Mark's advice is simple and yet powerful.
The Human Part of Blogging
People often get caught up on the technology or A-plugin verses B-plugin, but as Mark so eloquently shared during the show, this is actually a small piece of a blog when summarizing the book:
"The real success to blogging is not technology. So many people focus on gadgets and widgets and WordPress themes and do we do Tumblr vs. WordPress?  The technology at the end of the day you can make it do whatever you want, but it's reaching down inside and finding your voice and having the courage to publish. That's the human balance, that's the human part of blogging that we wanted to explore."
Mark goes on to share that every person has their own expertise, wisdom and stories to tell. Maybe that is your perspective as a marketer or as a parent or as a foodie. For Mark, the key to success is finding your own voice and hitting Publish. For me that really resonated. I know I get a bit of the butterflies each time I click that button. Am I providing good content and being helpful? Is my commentary on the show and issues at hand insightful? And of course, can readers hear my voice in my writing? I hope the answer is yes!
What are the first steps?
Mark suggests one simple exercise to start. Write out first 25 or 30 headlines that you think you want to write. As he puts it the first five are easy, but it gets much harder by #20, #25, #30. The key in this exercise is to not only potentially layout your first 30 posts, but you may find a theme or voice unfolding in front of you. That theme may change over time, but it will be one that will help unify posts as you write. When looking at the list of big blogs I shared above, you may feel intimidated or overwhelmed. It's hard to imagine you are potentially competing with a blog with 100k or millions of viewers. Instead, says Mark, commit to finding the right reader. By doing this, Mark shares that "instead of me finding audience, my audience found me." Pretty powerful. Mark offers so many other great tips in both this interview and the book itself. If you have a growing blog, or want to begin blogging, I can't encourage you enough the read Born to Blog: Building Your Blog for Personal and Business Success One Post at a Time. Tune in below to here more of Mark's insights from this interview! Connect with Kat on Google +, LinkedIn or Twitter. [lead image via HubSpot]