Lessons Learned

byDebbieRose

2K followers

Updated 6 years ago

I spent the last couple of months, blogging an analogy series that compared common, everyday words to Wealthy Affiliate. If you are interested in reading any of them, just go to my profile page. I enjoyed creating and writing them and I am glad some of you enjoyed reading them. Writing content is so important to what we do, I wanted to share some of the lessons I learned.

Goals

Specific, measurable goals are crucial to success. We hear it all the time.

I just never did it. I have always had general goals in my mind. However, they were always very flexible. This task was very specific. The goal was to go through the alphabet and write a blog about each letter. That is 26 articles. I knew exactly what I had to accomplish. I knew specifically when the goal would be accomplished….finishing the letter “z”. The specificity made it very easy to stay focused, productive, and committed. Before this goal was set, I was not consistently writing WA blogs, although that was always my “goal”. It was that clear vision that kept me moving forward to a successful conclusion. Accomplishing a goal is a great feeling…a real confidence booster.

Support

Support keeps the momentum going. Veronica and Frank originally thought of this idea and invited me to join them. Without their support, I never would have gotten involved. Having a little self-competition also helped. I did not want to get too far behind the pace Frank was working at, and each time I read either of their blogs, it inspired me to be a bit more creative in my writing.

I also had support on the home front. My husband got behind the idea and kept throwing out words to consider. He kept encouraging me to try different approaches.

Community Support. The members who took the time to comment were invaluable. I made some new friends so I wanted to provide an interesting article for them to read. I also wanted to relate it to Wealthy Affiliate in a way that was motivational and informative. I valued the time you were giving me and I did not want to waste your time. Being active in the community is such a plus of WA…..and so helpful towards our success.

Headlines and Images

Using the right headlines is a something that can make or break our readership. Using a variety of colors, fonts, and sizes all attracts the reader initially. It provides an opportunity for the reader to do a quick view to see if the article is something they want to read completely. I learned this lesson the hard way. The title that appeared at the top of my blogs was “Affiliate Analogy”. In retrospect, not a real attention grabber! In spite of having over 1,000 followers and being in the top 100, I did not get that many likes and comments. (Makes me much more appreciative of the ones who did.)

Any topic can be spun to be relevant and interesting. We just have to get that initial click. Imagine the millions of people searching websites on any given day. We have to have a way to get them to stay on our sites….and graphics could help. At one point, I interrupted my analogy blogs and wrote a WA blog on my success on being ranked. I used the title “Breaking News” and had almost 4 times the likes and comments.

Good, relevant images make an article “pop”. For all the same reasons I mentioned about having a good Headline. It is what draws people in and entices them to read the article. Many of the comments were about the pictures.

Keeping it Real

The more I wrote, the more natural and personal my blogs became. This was beneficial in a couple of ways. First, the content was easier to write! I did not have to try has hard. Second, I was able to relate more to the readers. We could connect on common ground. It just made the whole experience more enjoyable for me and that made it more enjoyable for the readers.

Write, Write, Write

Writing did get easier the more I did it.

I developed specific habits that helped me put an article together. I had steps that I followed for each blog. This is different for everyone. My routine took shape as I went along.

• Decided on the word
• Found the images
• Created an outline
• Filled in the paragraphs
• Formatted the text

WA Training

Guess what? All of these “lessons” are addressed in the training and discussed within the community. Wealthy Affiliate is the best “university” for our online businesses. I guess we just have to experience things for ourselves to learn them.

As the saying goes,”Just do It”.

We Can Do This Together!