Jonathan is a blogger and Internet entrepreneur. The tips he is sharing above are based on what he has experienced from his site which focuses on health, fitness, and weight loss. At WeightLossTriumph he reviews successful weight loss programs, and offers a Medifast coupon code. For a promotion for Nutrisystem click here. Medifast and Nutrisystem are two medically studied diet plans that over the past 3 decades have helped millions of people improve their health and live a better life.
One of the big flaws that kind of gets to us as bloggers is that we start to only take in the tips that people feed out to us from other bloggers, as though bloggers are the only people who can give valuable tips about blogging.
But where do ‘they’ get their tips from? Obviously they have to come from the general world.
It is in fact this general world filled with all those non-bloggers that can actually teach us more about blogging than what most online bloggers can actually do. There are some certain life styles that working in not only full-time blogging or part-time blogging can really take us away from.
Here’s what non-bloggers can teach us about blogging:
There is always a process of education then application
College and university are hopefully something that everyone is striving for. Even professional, full-time bloggers can also fall into the trap of assuming that this process doesn’t really apply. Education always happens before application does! Just because you’ve got the biggest numbers and the highest Alexa rank doesn’t mean that you automatically know more than everyone else. Everyone always has something to share and you always have something to learn from them!
People don’t often part with their money
Ever seen those people who go around doing those small little things like washing your car window or cleaning the front of your house and then demanding money from it. It’s often a fair bit easier for people to go and grab money off you in the physical world but in the online world it’s much different.
People don’t part with their money as quickly as what they do online. There is also a fair bit of shopping around and comparing done before any sale. For example, buying a wordpress theme now involves seeing all the reviews and tips from the other people who might be using it. Buying an online commercial weight loss program (like weight watchers, Medifast, Nutrisystem, etc) at a discount involves visiting a diet blog featuring coupons for diet plans. Things are certainly more complicated these days.
Stereotypes are always around us
Even though today people say that class systems and all have just been about destroyed in this modern 21st century, people still always manage to make judgments about people. Someone doing a specific job will have other people cringing at them because of where they work.
The same actually applies for blogging – although it looks like it doesn’t. Do something a certain way or if it’s a bit dubious and other bloggers will whine and complain in all sorts of ways. This is a hard one to detect as most bloggers don’t actually share their opinion of others bloggers in fear of having their own reputations destroyed.
Conclusion
As long as you look closely, there are actually many things that non bloggers can have about blogging and can teach us about it; experiences that most people don’t often have, jobs that professional bloggers don’t have to go to – all of this we can use, to learn new things about blogging, just take a look and there are most chances you will find.
I like to think I’m both blogger and non-blogger. (I’m still bragging that, back in the early 1990s, a reporter for the HindustanTimes referred to me as a “veteran blogger.” Truth is, Blogger had just gone beta, I’d just set up a blog, and one of my first posts consisted of a non-blogging writer’s attempt to define, for the uninitiated, just what this word “blogging” meant.) I don’t think of myself as a “blogger” first and foremost. It’s like knitting an afghan and calling myself a “knitter.” It’s true, but those who work in the garment industry or run knitting classes or sell knitting supplies might raise an eyebrow.
Now, more to the point, those who are trying to be full-time, “professional bloggers” tend to lose sight of their audience, their market – they hang out with others of their own kind, share all these tips and techniques (many of which are quite useful, mind you), and preen in front of each other to gain approval and recognition in their field (as do most other professionals – so no, nothing WRONG with that, per se) – the problem is, they also spend a lot of time courting search engines (machines) and forget about the human touch, or how to truly BE trustworthy (consumers are also savvier and warier and literally terrified of all the security risks inherent in the Internet, as hyped by the news media – the same way they secretly imagine the guy washing their window is doing it with muddy water just so they’ll crack open the window to yell at him and he’ll reach in, choke them, and steal their car). The only way to counter that is to BE trustworthy and consistently give good value for the money. How can you give good value if you don’t know your potential CUSTOMERS? I mean get out there and talk to them – LISTEN to them. Not to someone else who tells you what they want and think and do.
Having “non-blogger moments” puts you into a perspective that you might have been amiss because you’re a professional blogger. It also lets you experience things outside of your zone which I think makes you more creative and in touch with other people.
I often like to get the perspective of someone on the outside. I feel like they see things that I do not see. I mean I am always working hard to work on the content, but I don’t always see the missing element that I do not have on my websites, that others do. I think to become a better blogger you have to have an open mind to these nonbloggers, because you need them more than you might think.
-Jean
Hi Jonathan,
I absolutely agree with you on this post of yours. Even if you are the ultimate know-it-all in the world of blogging, there are still some things you don’t know about other stuff associated with it. You might be surprised to learn some new things from newbie bloggers!
I think the point here is to not ignore those who are new to something, especially when it comes to things related online. They also have their own stories to tell.
You are absolutely right. Non Bloggers can actually help us predict the things which normal users will like to see in our blog. We, bloggers, sometimes like the design of our blog in a blogger’s perspective but fail to realize sometime that majority out their is non bloggers which may not like the way we think.
It is true that even we are used to or familiar with making blogs or commenting with blogs, there are things that we haven’t heard that are important to make the blog more meaningful.
Not everyone has also recently started a pro blogger, Everybody come up with numbers zero ?
Does this mean that before becoming a pro blogger and are all non-bloggers.
So please help and appreciate the non-bloggers when they first started.
Personally, I think so ! How do you think ?
nice tips about blogging . Blogging is more or less like real like professions which are not carrier online . having similar difficulties
There is always room for more and this applies perfectly for all of us. Just as bloggers learn from non-bloggers, people from all walks of life learn from each other. I completely agree that the design of our blogs may not appeal to each and every reader since all readers do not think and perceive things in the same way but their opinions should prove constructive for us. According to great philosophers of the past, learning is a continuous process which starts from cradle to grave and its completely true.
Nice unique topic to write on!!! Moving on, many of our visitors are non-bloggers and so, the views of non-bloggers around us can surely help us in developing our blogs. You have illustrated nice tips to prove the point. 🙂