The Surprising Secret to Blogging Success

I’m going to share a very important secret to blogging success that is often overlooked. First, though, I don’t think it’s any secret that blogging is pretty hard work and many don’t actually meet their goals. So how do you become one of the success stories? The concept is quite simple, but it’s surprisingly difficult to put into action.

Are your ready to hear the secret? First, I want you to promise me that you’ll take this advice to heart and act on it – not just nod your head in agreement.

Okay, so here it is: You need to simplify! You don’t need to keep adding things to your plate – instead you need to do fewer things, but do them better. I think one of the hardest struggles as a blogger is to stay focused instead of chasing every new idea and every new social media platform. For everything you decide to do, there should be ten other things that you don’t do.

The truth is that we all have a limited amount of time and energy, and we simply cannot do it all no matter how much we wish we could.  It’s far better to accept those limitations and plan for them rather than to try to do too much and let a bunch of things drop.

When I first started business, I made one promise to myself that I have rarely broken. No matter what I was going to write one post and send it to my newsletter subscribers each week. My number one focus was growing and nurturing my e-mail list. I would not do anything else until that was done! I spent many, many hours crafting just one post to send to my subscribers so that it could be the best it could possibly be.  If I had also tried to master Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, figured out how to put ads on my blog, etc, I wouldn’t have experienced nearly as much success with my e-mail list.

Once I had a pretty good system going for my e-mail list and it was a habit, I added in Pinterest as my number two focus. It’s no coincidence that I have 60,000+ e-mail subscribers, but only 400 twitter followers! I had to sacrifice a lot of twitter followers (and other social media growth) to focus on my e-mail list and Pinterest, but it was so worth it. I think you will make far more of impact by getting really good at one or two things than being mediocre in a lot of areas.

Here is a recent scope I did all about this.

Now I have an assignment for you. Remember, you promised that you would take this advice to heart and act on it!

1 – I want you to take out a piece of paper and write down your top 3 focus areas in your blog and biz right now. Each week, do not do anything else until you have worked on those areas. It’s okay to cut some things completely.

2 – If you want to start a blog or take it to the next level, I highly encourage to sign up for this free video training series called Blogging Made Simple created by a highly successful blogger, Ruth Soukup. She offers some fantastic free training that will also encourage you to keep things simple and help you understand what your focus should be. You can even listen to the videos while you’re doing other things so they don’t take up any extra time.

Do you struggle with simplifying your creative endeavors? Or were you already in on this secret? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Please note: Some links in the post are affiliate links. Thanks so much for supporting this blog.