Discovering Blogging Revelations Through Note Taking

Blog­ging is really all about shar­ing your knowl­edge with oth­ers. The knowl­edge you share usu­ally comes right out of your head, and the fact that you even know any­thing is the result of read­ing other people’s “notes,” also known as arti­cles.

I see a blog as one giant notepad. Every post that is writ­ten on any blog really is just the blog­ger tak­ing their notes on any topic and shar­ing it pub­licly. That’s really what the whole inter­net is about, and that stays very true for blogging.

But besides these “notes” that we share pub­licly, there are some even more impor­tant notes that every blog­ger should be tak­ing behind the scenes. While those more per­sonal notes can even­tu­ally become pub­lished to your blog as an arti­cle, I still find that the way you doc­u­ment the process of your blog as it grows is one of the keys to bring­ing your blog to success.

I’m going to share with you why I think that it is impor­tant for you to mon­i­tor any­thing that hap­pens on your blog, so you can make the best of the out­come — whether it be good or bad. Take notes, this might be a long post.

Tak­ing Note of the Good & the Bad

Blog­ging is very two-sided. While things can seem to be going great, things can turn for the worse in a heart­beat and vice-versa. The num­ber one way I feel that most blog­gers kill their blog is by try­ing out new things to make their blog bet­ter, which in many cases will result in the oppo­site way they intended it to end.

Our blogs are con­stantly chang­ing. I know mine are, I like to try some­thing new on them a lot. But I know it’s impor­tant to keep note of what works, and what doesn’t. Why is it impor­tant though?

The Impor­tance of Find­ing What Works

Okay, so we all know that it is impor­tant to find what works on our blog so we can make our blog bet­ter. But in the sense of obser­va­tion and study­ing it, it is impor­tant to find what works and mon­i­tor it.

When ever I add some­thing to my blog, I like to wait it out and see what kind of reac­tion it gets from my com­mu­nity. I always am sure to keep either a phys­i­cal note, or a men­tal note of its progress and whether or not it should stay.

If I find that what­ever was work­ing out on my blog the first time around, I want to dig deeper and ana­lyze why it is doing so well. The key things I want to gather about it are:

• People’s Opin­ions — What do peo­ple really think about this par­tic­u­lar thing?
• How It Works — What func­tion­al­ity does it add to my blog?
• How does it ben­e­fit my read­ers? — Does it help peo­ple, or does it just look cool (prefer­ably, it should be both)?
• How has it helped my blog grow? — Is this thing you have on your blog improv­ing any­thing statistically?

But the Key Ques­tion Is: How Can I Improve What Works?

When­ever you have some­thing great, always look for ways to make it bet­ter. Never fix what isn’t bro­ken, but try to improve it by lit­tle pieces so it turns becomes even better.

I really believe that by tak­ing notice of the things on your blog that work well for you will really help you improve your blog. But if you take note of things that don’t work on your blog, I find you may be in even bet­ter shape. Which leads me to my next point.

Dis­cover your flaws, and What Doesn’t Work So You Hope­fully Never Do It Again

Is it true that what you don’t know won’t hurt you? In blog­ging, it won’t hurt you, but I do think it can kill you. Curios­ity may have killed that stu­pid cat, but hope­fully you are smart enough not to let that curios­ity kill you. And I’m going to stop drop­ping proverbs on you now.

While I do think every blog­ger should always try new things, they need to pro­ceed with cau­tion. Things like throw­ing AdSense up on your blog or mak­ing a few design tweaks are noth­ing. But I am talk­ing about the “larger scale” things that you can try out that can go either hor­ri­bly right or wrong for you.

How not to let Blog­ging Exper­i­ments Harm you (too much, if at all)

Con­duct­ing an exper­i­ment on your blog to learn new things is a must for any blog­ger. But, like I said above — you need to be care­ful about how you approach it. This is where note tak­ing comes back in to play, but it doesn’t revolve just around your notes any­more. You have to rely on what oth­ers have done.

Quick Fire Tips For Try­ing Out New Things

• Read what other blog­gers have done if you can. If what you’re try­ing is a mon­e­ti­za­tion method, then there is no doubt in my mind that there will be an arti­cle about it some­where on the web.
• Pretty much the same as above, case stud­ies are a very well mapped out research on a spe­cific topic with the inten­tion of back­ing up a pro­posed the­ory. Not many blog­gers do many case stud­ies I believe, so find­ing one may be a lit­tle tricky, but really ben­e­fi­cial if you can pull one up.
• Try to find other blogs who already have set your idea into action. Obvi­ously if you have a unique idea, you prob­a­bly won’t find any blogs using it. But if it’s some­thing com­mon, go to mul­ti­ple blogs and see how they are car­ry­ing out their inter­pre­ta­tion of some­thing “new.”
• Plan it out like crazy. Inno­va­tion could never be cre­ated with­out some form of plan­ning. Even if it’s the most sat­u­rated idea in the world, I find that if you really take the time to think it through and ask your­self basic ques­tions like Who? What? When? Where? How? Why?, you can turn any­thing into a really great thing.

Bad things will hap­pen on your blog regard­less of how much plan­ning or note tak­ing you do. But you know what? It’s prob­a­bly for your best. So long as you doc­u­ment the process, reac­tions and after effects of your idea then you will have learned some­thing. And all along, it would turn out that what could have been bad was always meant to hap­pen for the rea­son of teach­ing you.

And So Begins the Cycle

This is the cool part of it all. If you actu­ally take my advice and jot down some notes here and there, you will dis­cover two things.

1. You will have fig­ured out what works and what doesn’t on your blog. With that knowl­edge in hand, you can take what­ever it is you have been doc­u­ment­ing and make the nec­es­sary revi­sions to it.
2. You will be on your way to writ­ing truly unique con­tent.

To expand a lit­tle on num­ber two, the fact that we are fig­ur­ing things out for our­selves and doc­u­ment­ing it is because it will help us become bet­ter blog­gers in many dif­fer­ent aspects (like writ­ing for exam­ple). It’s like a cycle kind of thing, we start with an ini­tial idea, learn more about it, unveil it to our read­ers, get a reader response and start it all over with a new idea. That’s all blog­ging is, a giant cycle about pub­lish­ing new thoughts and ideas.

Do you kind of under­stand how by tak­ing a note, you are really dis­cov­er­ing new things for your­self? It’s the things you find out for your­self that make you a unique blogger.

Hope­fully this post has opened your eyes a bit on some­thing you may have known a lit­tle about before. What do you think about doc­u­ment­ing your blog­ging paths? Let me know in the comments!

Photo by Austin Kleon

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