Tooting your own horn – the Second Most Important Skill for a blogger
I’m a pretty versatile guy. I do decent enough designs and make a decent living on it. I write well enough to make some more money that way, and being thick-headed enough to try writing fiction in a language that isn’t even my native one. I’ve been around in this webbish world longer than most, earned a lot, survived dotcom, almost crashed but picked myself up again.
There’s two things I truly suck at, though. One is selling stuff, be it ads or products. That’s not my thing, probably for the same reason as the other thing, namely tooting my own horn.
And if you want to succeed in blogging, you really need to learn that skill.
If you read up on good blogging tips you know that “leaving comments” and “e-mailing prominent bloggers” is the two most repeated pieces of advice you’ll get. And they’re true.
Number one is easy, just comment on a post and your link’s there. If you’re really cocky you can even drop a link in the actual comment, be make sure it’s really valid – nobody likes a URL spammer.
Number two is a lot harder. I always feel awkward e-mailing bloggers, and people I have no real business with overall actually, asking for link love and the like. Heck, I had a hard time getting my ass out of the wagon for the (now sleeping but soon to be awakened) BloggerTalks interviews! And those are valid e-mails if any!
You need to stand up straight (sometimes literally, like Ahmed Bilal obviously realized) and toot your own horn, being proud of what you’re doing, and the skills you have.
Don’t sell yourself short. You’re the only salesperson you have, don’t make him a slacker!
Enough pep talk.
Don’t make him think you’re a boaster either. You need to be honest, from start to finish, with the way you present yourself. If you’re really good at writing snappy news posts, but suck at longer feature pieces – for instance – then don’t claim to be the Feature King. Point to what you do know, and tell people that matter.
I think Ahmed is right. Some of us have some kind of roadblock built in that stops us from promoting ourselves.
Get over it. Or get run over.
Incidentally, the Most Important Skill a blogger needs is, of course, being a good writer of blog posts. You knew that.