2 words: cede control.
I explain through my 11 Fundamentals of Blogging how success flows through other people.
Create value. Make friends. Open income streams. Generously help people. Prosper. Pretty simple concepts, right?
Wrong.
I read how a highly successful entrepreneur advised ceding control of your business to see eye-popping success. Stunning success finds generous bloggers who build huge, rabidly loyal communities. Loyal readers provide a staggering amount of user-generated content through guest posts and blog comments. But control freak, fear-filled bloggers tend to close comments and guest posting to ensure they have full control over everything on their blog. If you know anything about eye-popping success, HUGE armies of like-minded people co-create something special.
Imagine Mark Zuckerberg preventing users from posting content to Facebook? Imagine Jeff Bezos preventing user reviews? Would Facebook have 2 billion members and would Bezos be worth $150 billion if each titan feared ceding control to users who generate content? The titans both had visions, then, billions of human beings helped bring the vision into a reality that changed the world.
You run a blog, not a social media site or digital storefront. Your business model is a bit different than Facebook and Amazon. But facing deep fears and ceding control allows 5, 10 or 50 people to drive a ton of passive traffic to your blog via guest posting. Allowing 10, 50 or 100 people to comment on your blog daily adds a sense community and content to your blog. Comments serve as content. Ceding control to other humans leads to stunning success because while you spend hours daily enjoying your life and freedom offline, guest posters write and publish content to your blog. Or guest posters write and submit content, when you publish the content as you hop online, for a free, passive traffic and profits boost.
Fears Need Be Faced
I had to face deep fears about branding, my blog voice and quality control before I opened guest posting and blog commenting. Feeling these energies alerted me: I was a micro-manager who would never scale to the next level by trying to be in complete control of creating content. I also could never grow my friend network and sense of community to epic levels with comments closed.
Eventually, you can be super successful but reach a ceiling by being a control freak. No human can scale effectively solo. Feel your fears. Cede a hefty amount of control. Open your blog to skilled guest posters. Blogging gets easier and easier when you have passive traffic flowing to your blog from your efforts and from the efforts of guest posters. Ditto for blog comments too; the level of content and engagement rises and traffic plus profits increase from there.
Make Your Blog a Community
I envision my blog being a community of people who helps fellow bloggers. We share content, comments and generous service to empower each other and to expand our reach far and wide.
I had to cede control to see the success I experience now. No titan does it solo or with 3 helpers around. Large, loyal, ever-expanding communities of people who create user generated content fuel most of the iconic sites online. Exclusivity sucks when you want to scale to the big time because you close yourself off from the humanity who creates staggering success.
Cede control. Let go to grow. Every top blogger cedes control to hand off tasks, to tap into the power of community, to increase their exposure and to accelerate their success to epic levels.
Reach new levels of success, fun and freedom with your blog.