I’ve been a bit distracted the last few days. I will finish my blog post and make some comments and participate in the forum, but not as much as I would like. You see, one of my passions is writing songs, I love it, and I find that when I jump on my keyboard or pick up my guitar, I get lost for hours trying to write fresh new songs. It’s a great escape and probably one of my favorite activities.
The songs I write are Christian songs for my church and youth group. I’m always hoping they’ll play on a Sunday or Friday night when we have meetings, but most of all I’d love to see them on tape. You will see that our church created its first CD/DVD this January and is looking to release a new album each year. The songs are quality songs.
The songbook has been created and we already have churches from the United States and other countries interested in playing our songs in their churches. My goal is to have at least one of my songs on the next album.
Why am I telling you this?
Because I think creating a blog that is famous is a lot like writing a hit song, and I’d like to draw on some of my experiences in both songwriting and blogging to highlight a few key points that I think will really help you with your blogging
1. The effort you put in will affect your outcome
Everyone says this, but hardly anyone does it. If you are serious about something, you will put in the necessary effort to get the desired result. I have tried writing songs with a couple of friends and it is interesting to see the results we get based on the attitude and effort they apply.
2. Love what you are doing
I love writing songs! I get lost for hours playing on my guitar, or going downstairs to our piano and playing around with new chords and progressions, finding interesting melodies and seeing how a song can develop from nothing.
People can tell when you love what you do, because it shows in your work. You can tell when songs are written from the heart or just created to be another hit. It is the same with blogs. People may realize that you are only posting to get more traffic and new subscribers, but I want to challenge you. Do you love what you are doing? Because if not, why not find something you love and put your effort into it?
3. Get information from some people you admire
Many times I get stuck in the middle of a song and have no idea where to go from there. That’s why I often take my songs to friends who are also talented musicians and singers, and ask for their opinion. Sometimes it just takes the smallest suggestion to trigger a new chain of thoughts that will help me finish a song.
When it comes to blogging, this is your circle of influence. It can be a blogging forum or just bloggers you connect with, ask questions and generate ideas. The BlogPremiere forum is great for this!
4. Don’t be offended when people don’t like it.
I had to learn this early with my songs. I would write a song that I thought was amazing only to have to close it with friends and leaders. It took me a long time to realize that they weren’t doing it to bring me down but to encourage me to keep pushing to write better, and I used to get really offended by their lack of interest. Now however I see it as something positive. Because they don’t tell me to give up, which means they think I can do much better.
We have to be able to learn to handle constructive criticism.
5. Learn from your mistakes
As soon as I learned the last point, about not taking offense when people told me my song wasn’t good enough, I started to take into account what they had to say. And you know what? My songs started to get better, and I think the same will happen with your blogs when you can learn from the things that you may not be doing well at the moment.
Just as I’m starting to see success with this blog, I’m also seeing some success with my songwriting. A song I wrote with 2 of my friends is now one of our most popular songs in Youth, and 3 of my songs are being played in the children’s church. I believe that if you follow these 5 easy steps you will have a famous blog in no time!
