Visionary Blogging Ally #1: Courage

June 25th, 2008 by Easton Ellsworth

Welcome to Part 2 of a 24-part series on using the Visionary Blogging method to overcome business blog challenges and develop successful blogger attributes. Subscribe for free.

Previously you learned how to overcome fear, an enemy to blogging with vision. Now let’s talk about fear’s opposite, courage - what it is, why it matters to business blog success and how to increase your courage as a professional blogger.

What is courage?

Courage is a quality that enables you to face scary things without fear. It’s fearlessness. It’s the power to be honest about your circumstances and skills. It’s doing what you need to do despite opposition.

Why is courage an important ally to business blogging?

Let’s face it: Blogging is hard. Sure, blogs make publishing and conversation easy. But their easiness only makes them harder to leverage. If anyone can do it, how do you stand out from the crowd?

Plus, when you blog, you stick your company’s reputation out like a chicken’s neck under the knife of the public eye. You risk damaging your brand, alienating your clientele … and wasting your time and money.

That’s why courage is one of the most important virtues you can cultivate as a blogger (and, for that matter, as a professional).

What does courage have to do with visionary blogging?

Everything. In order to be a visionary blogger, you’ve got to have a strong sense of purpose for your blog. You also need the determination to follow through with your blogging plans. Diligence, the fifth element of the Visionary Blogging method, dies on the vine without courage. And when that happens, the blog’s key metrics for success tend to shrither (that’s shrivel and wither) as well.

How can you strengthen your courage as a business blogger?

Great question. Here are 5 tips to increase your blogging courage:

1. Learn about your blogging fears. You might not even know you have them, but once you track ‘em down, you can think about how to overcome ‘em. (See Awareness.)

2. Carefully set lofty goals. If you’re not aiming for the mountaintop, it could be that you need to muster up some extra guts. (See Focus.)

3. Decide to bounce back from blogging failure. No need to wallow. Up and at ‘em. We all make mistakes. (Betcha I’ve made more than you when it comes to blogs.)

4. Start each blogging day with a miniature pep rally. You might just make or break your blogging success in the first 15 minutes of each day at the blog grind. Do you start by gazing nervously at your traffic stats, or do you begin with a spin?

5. Give another blogger courage. Leave a comment on another blog. Send a friendly advice-filled email. Make a phone call. Just do it to make someone else feel stronger. And you’ll naturally feel a boost of Vitamin C (Courage, that is) yourself.

I’m sure you can come up with other ways. Perhaps there’s a tactic you’ve used successfully to expand your blogging courage. I’d love it if you left a comment below letting us know your thoughts.

I just want to take a moment here to thank you, the Visionary Blogging reader, for giving me courage to make a business out of helping people use blogs more effectively. Thanks for being here. It encourages me to no end. I hope to encourage you as well as we move forward together.

As Paul McCartney croons, “Many times I’ve been alone, and many times I’ve cried … anyway, you’ll never know the many ways I’ve tried.” Courage means facing that long and winding road with your gaze fixed in front of you, no matter what obstacles stand in your way.

Blogging can be scary. But you can be a courageous business blogger. And, if you like, I can help you do it.

Stay tuned for my next post on a particularly nasty enemy to visionary blogging.

photo credit: CarbonNYC

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