Schaefer Mark - Born to blog: building your blog for personal and business success one post at a time

Copyright 2013 by Mark W. Schaefer and Stanford A. Smith. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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We love to blog.

In fact, it is the best part of our jobs. And weve had some successboth of us have developed successful personal blogs that have led to new business connections, personal and business benefits, and yes, even new customers.

Weve also built blogs for dozens of organizations from Fortune 500 giants to small retailers, schools, government agencies, and nonprofits.

Blogs are the content engine driving the social web. In addition to providing a unique voice of authority, they are undeniably critical to any digital marketing initiative. Even if nobody reads them, blogs are a powerful contributor to search engine optimization efforts, creating PR opportunities, and providing a platform in a time of crisis.

The many important and proven benefits of blogging led us to have many lively conversations around this one question: Why do so many blogs suck and what can we do about it?

The idea for this book was born!

To let our personalities come through in this text (which will make it so much more interesting), well occasionally pause and tell individual stories to make a point. Lets start that now.

MARK: My blog {grow} was squarely in the suck category for nearly a year. I started it as an experiment. After all, if I was going to consult about marketing and teach it, I needed to immerse myself in the new media.

As a classically trained marketer, I started my blog with a well-defined marketing message that I wanted to deliver to my target audience of business prospects. It sounded good on paper.

Two things happened. First, nothing happened! I just got no traction at all and very few comments or engagement for months. Second, I became bored.

So instead of sticking to a script, I started to relax and just be myself and blog about whatever interested me. I told stories about my marketing journey and connected the dots between traditional marketing and social media. I challenged myself to try different styles. I let my funny side come through and experimented with video blogs.

Then, an amazing thing happened. Instead of me finding my target audience, my target audience found me! The blog started to grow and attract international attention. I was on to something, and this led me to reflect on the common themes of my success and the success of others. Was it possible for an individual, or a company, to be built to blog? What made the best blogs sing and hum with excitement?

STANFORD: I know the exact moment I became a Lady Gaga fan. It was June 29, 2010, the moment my post Lady Gagas 8-Point Guide to Larger than Life Blogging was published.

I wrote the post as a way to cleverly (in my opinion) point out how the pop icon and social media maven could offer some advice to new bloggers. I had run across a Rolling Stone article about Lady Gaga and immediately saw a decent blog topic.

In my gut, I knew that I had a cool concept. Lady Gaga was in the news after flipping off Mets fans, and I figured I could get a few extra eyeballs by drafting behind the news story.

The post took a week to write since I chickened out at least three times, refusing to publish the post until I had exhausted every excuse. The mouse icon hovered over the publish button for a full 10 minutes before I quickly clicked the button, stood up, and walked away from my desk.