Making Mistakes and Maximizing Your Blogging Efforts
TL;DR
- Making mistakes is part of the blogging process.
- Grow your blog by learning from your mistakes.
- Use analytic tools to gather feedback and make changes.
It isn’t necessary to aim for perfection when beginning your blog. You want to make mistakes so that you can learn what works. The trick is to measure your performance. Adjusting your writing as time goes on. Tweak things until you hit your stride.
Your worst mistake is not starting.
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Learning by Making Mistakes
You cannot get better if you do not try.
If you try:
- You might fail.
- You may do something wrong.
- Things may not go the way you want.
The only way to deal with this is to have a curious attitude. To reframe failure as a learning experience. This is a growth mindset. It helps when learning new things. It works well when things are especially difficult.
What Defines a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset is a belief that you will develop your skills with effort, persistence, and time.
- You trust that you will overcome your challenges.
- You take criticism as a learning opportunity.
- You find inspiration in other people’s stories.
The process is what matters most to those with a growth mindset. They care about their progress. Working towards their achievements is rewarding. They understand that they will do them all eventually.
Carol Dweck coined the term in her work as a psychologist studying motivation. Her book Mindset discusses the topic in-depth (affiliate). One of the areas she applies her work to is education. Answering the question of why some kids thrive while others give up in the face of failure.
Understanding Criticism
Putting things out there means that people will respond. Not always thoughtfully. That is the dark side of the internet. Yet, some will take what we said and comment in ways that we can learn from.
Blogging is a conversation that we have with others. We can chain responses together transforming an original work. In the future, I will discuss why it is good to argue with authors. This fuels our writing process. This is an approach that I learned from my youth writing notes in my books.
When people criticize us with good intent, to improve our work, this is something that we can build on.
Using Analytics as Feedback
Another way to get this type of feedback is through analytic tools. This is your primary source of understanding if people enjoy your blog. Comments seem less and less frequent. I’m hoping that is a trend that reverses in the future. You need to look at pageviews and subscription rates if you don’t receive direct replies.
Using Google Tools
One metric that I like is the average time someone stays on a page. I write posts that can be 1000+ words. Well, my favorite topic is mathematics. I want to know if people read it all or bounce from the articles when they see the length. The good news, I know from using Google Analytics that people will read for about ten minutes. This reinforces that I am doing something right. I’m surprised every time that I see that.
Another analytic tool worth using is Google Search Console. This gives you feedback on search traffic. It might be the only clue that you receive that people are clicking on your website from a search. This will tell you if your titles and on-page SEO are effective. As well as the keywords people use to find your site. This is something that you can optimize and improve with time.
Analytics give you insights into what you are doing right or wrong. It gives you the information you need to adjust your strategies. You should play and tweak aspects of your blog design and writing. Measuring how your analytics change after implementing them.
Conclusion
Intimidating. That is what it feels like to start something new. Thinking of our challenges as opportunities makes this process easier. We can go easy on ourselves by lowering expectations. Even have some fun in the process. This is your time to figure things out. Taking in feedback and getting better a little bit at a time.
Making mistakes is not the bane of your blog. Embrace them for success. Using analytics gives you feedback that you can use. Give yourself permission to play and you will be on your way!
What will you try next to grow your blog?