Friendly Competition Builds Blogs
Awesome Content: Set Up For Online Success
This is a guest post by Seth Waite. If you're interested in getting in front of the readers of Site Sketch 101, check out the guest posting guidelines here.
Every blogger is trying to carve out a prominent spot in their niche with successful blog. Blogging successfully requires a lot of hard work and effort to get the best content, promotion, seo, and design available in the blogging market.
Many bloggers spend money advertising and doing keyword research to beat out their competition and build a better blog than their competitor. But blogging should not be a bloody-knuckle brawl, instead friendly competition can improve even the best blogs.
Just the other day I posted about the importance of content on a blog and referred to the old adage of content as king. The post sparked a bit of a debate and Nicholas commented by explaining his idea of the complete package of blogging.
I completely understand his point, but we do disagree slightly. So I responded to his very well thought out comment with a blog post about how Content is King.
I then responded to his post with a link and an explanation of where and why we differed. The post is getting a good response and we are having a lot of fun flushing out the arguments the two of us made.
The process reminded me of what I had learned long ago when I started blogging, link to your friends, link to your enemies!
Now I would consider Nicholas my friend, but our blogs do compete in many categories for readers. So we are both friends and competition but I believe because of the way we are competing we will both succeed because of it. Here’s how we are doing it:
Communication
Bloggers are so simple to get a hold of with comment sections, contact pages, email addresses, twitter, and IM’s. The first thing is we have been commenting on each others blog for some time now. Then when I decided to respectfully disagree I emailed Nicholas and told him I was posting about him and it was a friendly gesture. That email led to a fun 3 way conversation between Alex (my blogging partner), Nicholas, and I. We discussed promotion methods, future projects and just had a good time. Even enemies send their messengers with their demands!
Linking
A recent competitor and friend taught me the importance of linking when he wrote the article, Link to Your Enemies! The writer was Kevin Muldoon from Blogging Tips and the link was appreciated. Since then Blogussion, my blog, has gone out of its way to be helpful to Blogging Tips when it is both relevant and appropriate. A simple link created a friendly relationship from a single post. A few of the tips Kevin explains for linking to competition are:
- Links create credibility when you cite to other sources.
- Links make your post more resourceful for your readers.
- Links encourage other readers to link back to you!
Subscribing
Reading other blogs is important to develop relationships and promote your blog. How can you work with other bloggers unless you know what they are working on. For example, my link to this blog’s article stemmed from the fact that I had read it and followed the blog. I subscribe to many blogs so that I can stay up-to-date with my competitors and friends. If you are only following a few big blogs you are really missing the point when it comes to blogging better. Your competitors will help you see things differently and give you fantastic ideas to better your blog. Also, when you see the work they put into their great posts it motivates you to do the same.
Conclusion
Blogging is a blast so have fun and make friends whether they are competing with you or not. Also do not be afraid to share your knowledge with others. The best way to start branching out right now is by clicking the links of the commentators of this very post. Start reading their blogs and building your friendly competition. Hold contests with each other and get each other motivated to do your best work and soon your enemies will become your blogging buddies.
Seth Waite
Seth is a 24 year old law student from Las Vegas, now living in Arkansas. Besides blogging at Blogussion, stumbling, and twittering I enjoy road bikes, basketball and Razorback football. Seth Waite has 1 post(s) at Site Sketch 101
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13 Vibrant Comments
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Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
I owe everyone on here a huge apology. I finally finished fixing all of my server issues and in the process, I restored a version of this website that I backed up a day or two ago and so I lost all of the comments that were made today.
I’m on a new host now and thankfully I am a strong believer in backups so we didn’t lose any more than a day or two worth of data.
If your comment was affected by this, you have my sincerest apology. Thanks guys and Seth, you absolutely rock, my friend.
Seth W said:
Not a problem! I understand that crazy things happen when blogging. Good thing you have a back-up!
Basically the comments were all awesome and discussed why competition was healthy and why we should blog as friends.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
I had read most of the comments and I definitely wanted to get in on the fun myself but was focusing my efforts on fixing the site.
I feel so bad that this happened during your guest post but I sure am thankful for your positive spirit and for the many people who have already benefited from your wisdom in this post.
Ron Boracay said:
Seth, this is a great article of yours. Long time ago, Im afraid to link because of some speculations running to my head. For example, if I link out to a competitor of mine on the same niche, I am afraid to loose visitors and afraid of being behind the rankings.
But as time goes by, and for the great tips I learned by reading blogs of great bloggers, I learned that, if you link to a resourceful and informational blog, you just earned yourself some kind of trust from your visitor because, I gave them a good website (link) that they can also take a look into.
Seth W said:
I think we all realize as time goes by that helping each other is the best way to blog!
brigid said:
Sharing and helping others to find more info is the thing that attracted me to blogging. Its just a big community ready to help and advise all the way.
Posting links to other sites is important in more ways than one.
being human is all about sharing.
Brigid
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
brigid –> You’re right. I like that sentiment a lot. Sharing is an awesome thing in blogging.
Andrew said:
I used to work in sales a very long time ago, for a multi billion dollar giant.
One of the executives used to tell a story of when he was a teenager working in a mens store.
His boss would tell all the staff that if they could not find a product in their own store that they should recommend another store close by that the customer might find what they were looking for.
In fact he would not just recommend the competitors store, he would walk them over, into the shop, advise the sales person what the customer was looking for then bid them good day.
In the end that multi national, multi billion dollar giant went bankrupt, but that little mens store has grown into a very prominent chain of stores nationally.
The moral of this story is that online or offline, if you help enough people out, even sending them to your competitors, they’ll be back, eventually, and they’ll be thanking you for it in the long run.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Andrew –> Yes! That is a great example. That is absolutely perfect and I love the concept of it. They cared more about honesty, integrity, and being true to their customers needs than they cared about making a quick sale. That is exactly what we need more of.
Senthil Ramesh said:
Right man I am involved in this type of technique now. Finding friends in the blogosphere, building networks, commenting and sharing my ideas etc.., Though I am newbie and very fresh in blogging they reach out and help me b giving the tips.
My Latest Blog Post: Twitterfeed – Tweets made easy
Nicholas Cardot said:
Senthil Ramesh –> Great. It’s not a bad thing to be a new blogger. You’ve got an exciting path in front of you. Enjoy every step of the journey.
Kidgas said:
This was a great article. There is no reason that bloggers can’t help each other and drive traffic to one another. Granted there is some competition for readers, but there are so many of them out there. Everybody can pull together and make the internet a better place for everybody.
My Latest Blog Post: Patience Pays Off ($5 to be Exact)
Nicholas Cardot said:
I completely agree. I don’t think that we’re going to hurt ourselves by referencing and learning from our competition. It should just push us to make our sites that much better.