3 Reasons Your Blog Will Succeed
If you spend as much time as I do looking for fresh ideas for your blog, you’ve probably noticed the negative trend swirling around social. Bloggers who blog about blogging (say that five times fast) have latched onto scare tactics to get you to click on that pin or tweet and discover how you’re failing. Do any of these sound familiar?
How you’re secretly sabotaging your blog
Are you making these mistakes? (Probably.)
5 habits that tank your traffic
10 reasons you’re not making any money (#2 will shock you!)
Sure, we’re probably all making mistakes on our blogs. But once that becomes the focus of your efforts, it’s impossible to stay positive and motivated. I believe we should all continually focus on improvement–that’s why I’ve been participating in the Boost Your Blog by 10k challenge on my personal blog–but we should also focus on our successes. Lately I’ve noticed pet bloggers posting on social that they’re feeling downhearted, unmotivated, and frustrated.
I get it.
When you measure yourself against all those “why you’re failing” posts, it’s easy to feel like a failure.
But you’re not.
Here are three reasons your blog will succeed:
You have passion.
Pet bloggers have to be the most passionate people on the internet. We have the best topic in the world–our pets–and pet bloggers do so much good online and in real life to help animals in need. Blogging can get exhausting, especially when balanced with full-time jobs, families, and social and community obligations. It takes passion to stay in it for the long-term, and pet bloggers have that passion in spades. You will succeed because of that passion, because it will keep you blogging even when you’re feeling less-than-confident.
You have creativity.
Yes, we write creative posts and take creative images, but you will succeed because the creativity in our community goes so much deeper than that. Pet bloggers are problem-solvers. It’s easy to forget that, when working and living with animals, we’re constantly innovating. How can I keep my cat from scratching the sofa? Your brilliant idea becomes a brilliant blog post! What tools can keep my dog from pulling on leash? Your fresh research becomes an insightful blog post! We use our creativity to keep our furry family members happy and healthy and mentally stimulated, then that creativity spills over into clever blog posts. Sure, not every post has the “perfect” pinnable image (at least, mine don’t), but the content inspires our readers to improve the lives of their pets. You can’t beat that.
You have community.
I read a handful of non-pet-related blogs, and I recently saw a comment on one that said something like, “If only our community would stop in-fighting, we could accomplish so much more.” Gasp! I thought about that comment all afternoon, and then I realized that a big driver for pet blogging success is that we are a strong, supportive community. At the end of the day–whether you’re a cat or dog blogger, a hedgehog blogger, a shelter blogger, or anything else under the animal-loving sun–we’re all here for the same reason: a dedication to animals. When you’re feeling down or unmotivated, scroll through your fellow community members’ blogs and leave kind comments. Log into the BlogPaws community page and start a positive discussion. Our community is there to help all of us succeed.
Of course there are lots of ways we can all continue to improve and to support each other while staying positive and motivated. We’d love to know: What have you found that works to keep yourself on track? What do you do to give yourself a boost of confidence when needed?
Images: Kinga/Shutterstock.com and Creative Lab/Shutterstock.com
Maggie Marton serves as the BlogPaws blog manager. When not hiking with her two pit mixes, Emmett and Cooper, or playing with Newt the Cat, Maggie writes about them (and the pet industry) at ohmydogblog.com and maggiemarton.com.
