Blog Duck - Blogging Tips & Ideas

Thinking about baseball and watching a bunch of the games has made me want to post about the similarities between blogging and baseball. Now I know many of you probably are not New York fans, but it just an example. Just imagine I am talking about your favorite baseball team.

• So Many People
  A typical Yankees game will have over 50,000 fans, and this is every day. This is a good way to conceptualize your readers or audience. A lot of times there will be just random people from all over the web finding your blog, and you have to try to keep them there! Think to yourself, “What does my blog have to offer that will retain visitors?”

• Star Players
  No matter where you are on the blogging success ladder, there will always be someone better than you. This however should never deter you from the fact that you have to ‘play’ or blog everyday. Some players get paid millions, and some bloggers get paid millions - so don’t be jealous.

• E.R.A.
  In baseball an E.R.A. or earned run average, is something a hitter wants to go up. Every at-bat and every hit calculates into the big picture. As a player you should not worry about your E.R.A. and in kind, bloggers should not worry about Google Pagerank or Alexa traffic rankings. Just keep blogging, and you will eventually be rewarded for it. There is no sense is getting aggravated or obsessed with a silly number.

• Everything Is Expensive
  Ballgames usually have a large amount of food, beer and merchandise available for purchase. Most of the time it’s a very expensive day to go to a major league baseball game. Same for bloggers, there are hundreds of sponsored links, comment services, link services, SEO services, etc. that a blogger could spend their money on. The results are identical - awesome until there is no more left.

• Going With What Works
  The Yankees have had the same uniform for their entire history, not to mention the New York symbol has remained a constant. This should go for blogs too, do not compromise the originality or easy-to-remember blog styling because you may be alienating your readers and they will simply disappear.

• Winning and Losing
  The Yankees have the ability to recover from losing games throughout the season, you should too. Not that your blog is winning and losing games, but you have to stick with it through the highs, and lows. Having your blog do well is easy, it’s the ability to transform a struggling blog into a successful endeavor that is hard.