Here’s Why You Shouldn’t ‘Blog’ to Build a Valuable Tribe for Your Work
Do this instead…
I’d like you to remove, what I believe is, a dirty word from your brain. It’s a word that’s been drilled into us over the past 15 years. What was a once a magical word is now tired, less-than-helpful, and an incredibly wasteful use of a new writer’s time.
Yes, I’m talking about the word blog.
Now, if you’re a blogger and you’ve created a website with successful traffic, a big tribe, and all the fixings — feel free to ignore this. But, if you’re beginning your journey as a digital content creator, don’t bother blogging. Not at first.
In this story I’ll share why you shouldn’t bother blogging if you’re new to the content-creation space. I’ll share where I’d go instead, and what to do with all that content once you create it.
You want to grow a list you own — I get it.
Email is the hands-down best way to build a sustainable, digital business. There’s less noise, less friction, and less competition. When you communicate with your reader via email, if you’ve done it right, she can stop and return to your content later, once her boss is done being a jerk about the latest TPS report.
Try getting a reader to return to your half-read social media content.
Blogging used to be the path. But that’s not the path anymore. We consume a lot of our content from platforms (like this one), where users stay on the platforms they love and only read stuff posted on said platform.
No one will search for your blog, because they don’t care about your blog.
You could spend the next two years of your life posting daily to a blog, and in two years you could end up with the same thirteen visits per day.
Contrast that with what I’m about to share with you, and you can see why blogging is a word you should erase from your memory.
The word blog is a disservice to hard-working writers
If you create great content, you write articles that stand alone. You don’t write blog posts. You write editorials, helpful, how-to stories, short stories, and educational content to lift the people you serve.
You don’t write blog posts.
Blog sounds like something less-than. As if the word article isn’t good enough for the digital space (which is far from the truth). The delivery medium has changed, but the message must be just as high-quality.
We write stories and articles.
Whether their scrolled or flipped, printed or digitized — none of that matters. If you believe in your writing craft, don’t kick it, spit on it, and deface it by calling it a blog post.
This is your work that matters most.
We are writers. Your work deserves to stand tall with its shoulders back. The word blog sounds like marshmallows and gumdrops. You are here to change someone’s life and become a better writer tomorrow than you are today.
It’s time to respect your work.
Lurk where they hang out
Let’s say you had a great secret that would help thousands of people transform themselves from where they are now to where they want to be. Would you rather stand in an empty room and read your article as loud as you could, or would you rather stand in an elbow-to-elbow packed house, speaking your article into a microphone before a captive audience, only there to see you?
Your beginning blog is the empty room.
The internet won’t give you any search love, because your site has no search clout. But there’s a short-cut. The best place to reach your tribe is to hang out where they already spend their time.
Don’t ask your people to come to you. Go to them.
When we seek the people we wish to serve, and take advantage of these huge platforms who’ve already invested hundreds of millions gathering the herd — why not post your content where they will see it?
Decide who you wish to serve and stalk their favorite hang-outs.
Whether it’s Medium, Facebook, LinkedIn, an industry-only forum — wherever. Choose your tribe and give them stuff where they already stand. Don’t waste time trying to leave digital bread crumbs to your front door.
You’ll waste so much writing time for so few results.
I did this for three years (seven years ago), writing every day. At my best, I earned a thousand dollars per month in consulting projects, which resulted from thousands of hours of writing — earning me pennies per hour, if that.
Those were the days when blogging was on the decline.
Those days were better.
Now, without massive traffic from an external source, there is no reason to blog as your soul place for content.
Once you have their attention, bring them into your tribe
Do not mistake this advice for trying to build a huge business on someone else’s platform. This is about getting their attention where they hang out first, then bringing them to a tribe you own, ASAP.
When you play in someone else’s sandbox, you play by their rules. You’re not in control of your income in any way. And your income can disappear overnight.
When you own your traffic you own your business.
As an indie creator, it’s imperative to your livelihood that you start building your tribe before you’re ready, before you want to, or before you think you’ve got something to say.
Even when you’re sure you’ve got something to say, you’ll make a ton of mistakes. Might as well make the mistakes today instead of next year, right?
It’s critical you have a website, because you own it.
When you spend your valuable writing time creating content on another’s platform, not only do you risk losing your fans their, but you also risk losing your content.
When you have your home base (even if there’s no traffic) you’ve got a digital parking space for all your articles — after you write them elsewhere. As you grow your following, your website will grow traction.
You’ll have all this content — pre-written articles, never blog posts (change your thinking) that will eventually get you search-engine attention. But this is the secondary place you park your content, not the first.
Remember, most people will find your content elsewhere — until you develop a big following. Then you can reap the benefits of enticing people to your own website.
- Write content where your tribe already hangs-out
- Entice these awesome people to come under your wing (your email list)
- Post your old content on your own website to keep it safe (and eventually generate a ton of traffic on its own, but only after the internet realizes you are someone to listen to.
The time to build your tribe is now.
The time to start a blog is never.
These are your future readers.
This should be a list you own (instead of relying on social media or some other big-business platform). Tap the link below. Enroll in my Tribe 1K indie email masterclass. I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 subscribers (and your next 1,000) without spending one hot nickel on ads.
We’re waiting for you.
Enroll in my Free Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers
August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.