The road from editor to editor-in-chief: how to become the best blogger
This article author Wayne Fu, the most in-depth research topic is Blogger, and also delved into many application experiences related to the Internet and cloud. Thank you for the permission to reprint, hereby thank you.
A while ago, after I wrote “[Blog traffic from search engines will not have emotions - find the motivation to run a website] (http://www.wfublog.com/2017/12/seo-traffic-no-emotion-improve-yourself.html)”, a beautiful person A food blog customer asked some SEO (search engine optimization) questions. She is a loyal reader and must know that I want readers to focus on things other than SEO.
After learning the reason for her inquiry, I felt that some general phenomena could be seen from this conversation, which showed that this problem is not just a case. It is worth exploring which webmasters pay special attention to SEO?
The conversation with this old friend also made me understand that due to the development of things and environmental factors, it is often impossible to follow the formal steps, so I am forced to pay attention to SEO and compete with other websites for SEO and other details.
Since there are many commercial blogs, I will write related SEO articles for this group. This article hopes to let readers understand through dialogue that if there is an opportunity to take the formal route, the power of not emphasizing SEO is the most powerful.
- Become a leader
1. Three elements for success
I think that in order for a website to stand out, it is best to meet one of the following three conditions:
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Become an expert.
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Have good writing style.
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Have good looks.
If you rely on appearance, the level of “best” is not enough. You may have to reach “top”, because there will always be younger beauties and young talents appearing.
No matter which one it is, we must make our abilities or conditions the “best”, or at least regard “the best” as the goal and work hard.
2. Differentiation
Many times, just being the best is not enough to get ahead because there are so many leaders in the field. Just like MLB (Major League Baseball) and NBA (American Professional Basketball), the mountains and valleys are full of martial arts wizards who can be chosen one out of ten thousand. Their strong physical fitness is just the basic requirement. What should we do at this time?
When physical fitness is no longer an advantage to stand out, you must make your own advantages different from others. What you have is what others don’t have, what you have is what others don’t, that is, “differentiation.”
It is very effective to watch other people write lazy bags, so follow them and write lazy bags. This is not differentiation because you cannot become the best. At least it should be a lazy bag with different angles or different expression techniques.
As long as you can come up with characteristics that are different from others and move in that direction, because not many people take this road, you will be the leader on this road.
“Differentiation” is essentially a way to become “the best”.
- What if you are not the best?
The above emphasis on the importance of being “the best” may not be enough for you to take action, because it looks a lot like writing articles and singing high-profile songs, right?
Let’s take a look at what would happen if we didn’t become the best.
1.Business
Many bosses come from a business background. They may work as a salesperson in a company at the beginning. After learning all the business skills and building a good relationship with customers, they will start their own business when they feel that they are capable enough. Even customers will follow him and leave.
Can you imagine, if you are not in the top business, would you dare to open your own company to take orders? Don’t talk about stealing business from other companies, and you will be eaten to death by customers.
2. The bottom of society
Many of the so-called low-end population are actually forced to enter society early not because of lack of qualifications, but because of helplessness. Their families do not have the resources to send their children to school, or they need to subsidize their family income.
When conditions are not as good as others, you may not be able to choose a better career, or you may have to take a different approach for the sake of money.
If there are enough resources and time, children at the bottom of society can be trained to become outstanding people and can stand out.
3. Apprentice
Imagine that as an apprentice, after years of hard study, you finally graduate and can start your own business. With professional skills and knowledge, I believe there will not be big problems after opening. What will be needed to further study will be marketing and management concepts, just like Wu Baochun.
If you haven’t finished your studies yet and are thinking about making money and opening a restaurant, and your craftsmanship is not as good as others, customers will know the details as soon as they eat, and it will be difficult to get repeat customers.
But the store cannot be closed easily after it is opened, so I tried every means to rely on my connections to attract customers, such as offering discounts, buying advertisements, re-decorating the store, hiring pretty girls to serve as counters, etc. In other words, I used all kinds of marketing techniques.
These methods of optimizing performance and book income will be effective in the short term, but what about the long term? There is no way to cultivate a group of loyal customers. Due to financial pressure, the family has young children to support, so I have to endlessly think of new ways to attract (kid) customers. This is a painful cycle. There is no time to go back and learn the skills again, so I can only think of ways to play well with the deck of cards in my hand.
If you had the chance to do it over again, if you had the choice, would you rather experience the short-term pain of growing up as an apprentice, or the long-term pain of entering the business battlefield prematurely?
- Lean Entrepreneurship
1. Entrepreneurship concept
Previously, in this article “[At which stage does a blog website need to start strengthening SEO?] (http://www.wfublog.com/2017/04/blog-when-to-improve-seo.html)” I mentioned the concept of “lean entrepreneurship”. First, let the blog have a competitive advantage in the market. After confirming that your product is mature and can survive, then you can talk about optimization. For example, strengthening SEO, marketing and advertising, etc.; on the contrary, premature optimization is a misplacement of resources.
2. Competitive advantage
If you think you are ready to start a business and start a business to make money, I would like webmasters to ask themselves a question:
What is the core competitive advantage of the blog?
What is the “niche” of the website? What themes and features of the website are enough to become the best? What is it that other websites don’t have?
As long as you can answer it, I strongly support you to start researching SEO optimization and allocate budget for advertising and marketing.
3. Enrich yourself and set a direction
If you still can’t answer, or if you actually have something to work towards but haven’t reached your goal yet, then I would suggest that you don’t rush into business activities too early, don’t rush to open a store, don’t rush to optimize your website, and spend your time first to make yourself the best.
I believe that most blog owners should start writing websites for sharing, not for making money, so they should have the right to choose and not be forced by the environment to start making profits.
It takes time to develop skills and expertise. Give yourself more time. The cultivation period is very hard, but it will not be more painful than pulling out a seedling to encourage it to grow.
- Reader dialogue
After finishing the preface, let’s get to the main topic, which is a dialogue with readers.
I can see your point of view, you just think too many people are crazy about SEO. You can tell from the latest article. It’s just that we all hope to have a better overall score, and I don’t want to take the evil path. Ha ha!
I feel gratified and feel that my article still has some effect.
I don’t think we should use SEO to win over other people’s articles that are better written, or that are clearly viewed by others. What I’m really afraid of is that if it slows down, I will be punished by Google, or it will be listed as a poor website.
If you are really worried about slow website speed, you can find solutions in my “Website Performance” related articles, such as reducing images, placing fewer ads and plug-ins.
What is more troublesome is that food travel websites require high-quality images, and the compression options for images are limited; when the website needs advertising revenue, it will not be able to give up the number of advertisements. For marketing functions, you need to install various tracking plug-ins, platform network plug-ins, etc., and it is not easy to give up.
After entering the commercial revenue model, it is another set of gameplay. You need to be willing to allocate budget and hire professionals to plan advertisements and choose plug-ins.
Your new article is very clear. If I am in the food industry, just like you are in the computer industry, and at least you are number one in the Blogger field, then I don’t need to care about SEO. I don’t even care about pictures, because there are many articles that you have the ability to write, but others can’t. So no matter how bad your SEO score is, the quality of your articles is good, and you don’t even have competitors.
Of course, you don’t have to worry about the data that needs to be slightly adjusted. You even have to really focus on the experience, and then the best way is to write articles that can solve consumer problems.
But I’m different. I’m just a food blogger everywhere. In many cases, the photos and text may be almost the same. I don’t expect to use SEO to add points. I just hope that I won’t be deducted. So when I saw the red letter, I became nervous again, but I also knew clearly that I had to install a lot of plug-ins to make it easier for myself and to improve the user experience. But we don’t understand the program that well, and we always want to ask if there are any different possibilities for speed improvement.
In fact, in the field of food, the ability to write differentiated articles is too limited. In addition to Facebook, if we rely solely on blogging, the improvement of photo technology requires aesthetics, training and experience. Everyone must be making progress. But there won’t be any sudden big changes, and the writing will really be the same as everyone else’s.
I believe this statement is true. When searching for food information on the Internet, sometimes I will encounter websites that make people’s eyes shine. However, the proportion that impresses me is really not high. After all, the main purpose of users is to obtain information. It is not easy for this type of website to stand out. The barriers to entry are not high and the competition is fierce.
Because my personality is that I don’t like to do the same thing as others, so I admire participants who dare to invest in a perfectly competitive market. However, I would like to encourage readers to pick up the book when they are ready, or choose not to pick up the book. If you are ready to win or lose with others in the killing battlefield, you really need to clarify what are the advantages of your website first? In what aspects can we be called the best?
As mentioned in a previous article, among the three essentials, only “appearance” is not recommended as the goal. Many travel and food websites have risen based on their appearance. From the beginning, the website can reach a high level quickly, and the starting point is considered to be ahead of other websites. However, there will never be a shortage of younger beauties, and the growth curve of this type of website may flatten out after a period of time.
In the long run, it is easy to fall into a predicament. Soon after the website is operated, it will enter the business model prematurely because it can make a profit. Generally, a blog has a long period of time when it starts to grow and accumulate strength. After entering the business model, it is the harvest period. It is no longer allowed to take a year off to go abroad to recharge and train yourself to become a leader, because opening the skylight of the website means everything will return to zero.
…I have written this in many different ways, but after all, the thing I am writing about is “food” and the difference is really not that big of a difference. Food is different from the programming realm. For the same article, maybe 5-7 people in the programming community wrote articles to answer the same question, which is already considered a lot of people.
It’s not surprising that 40-50 people in the food industry write about the same restaurant, and people from other counties and cities will also come over to write about it. Then, Aishiji, Aiping.com, Wokedao, Dongsen, each of these platforms has the blog’s article search as their own. Plus OnePlus will have more than a hundred people writing about any popular restaurant, so the difference is really too small, and there are as many articles as there are.
我们的兴趣就是美食，所以就是写美食的，总也不可能跨去别行。 If each score is not weighted, the difference in score will be lost!
If I hadn’t improved on words and pictures, I wouldn’t have thought of doing SEO in an unfamiliar field. The point is, I’m definitely not the kind of SEO obsessed madman you think. At best, I just hope that at least I won’t be deducted in this matter, so I’m lucky.
I just want to mention to you that it’s not that I don’t understand your SEO article, or that I’m talking nonsense without reading it. On the contrary, I really read what you wrote. I know your point of view, and what you said are all facts and good suggestions, but the problem is that I am not in the rare category, I am in the Red Sea, and if I only have one skill, I will soon exit the market.
I am very grateful to her for sharing with me the dilemma in this field. It is because of this passage that I understand why so many websites are desperately trying to optimize SEO, because in a perfectly competitive market, any optimization or any small detail may have an impact.
This also shows that my SEO articles are for regular bloggers, and commercial websites are not my audience (TA), so there will be no intersection when discussing SEO concepts.
Because the perfectly competitive market belongs to the commercial field, and how to operate in the commercial field is as mentioned before, I will write a separate article to discuss it.
After readers understand the current situation of the market, they can choose not to enter a perfectly competitive market. Or, enter after you think you can survive in the market, that is, after you become the leader. Don’t enter too early.
- The editor’s efforts
Because I have no expertise in food or tourism, I dare not give short-term clear (tactical) methods to this type of blog. I can only provide long-term (strategic) efforts to escape the completely competitive market. However, I believe that this principle is applicable to all types of websites.
1. Cultivate unique perspectives
The differentiation and uniqueness mentioned earlier are also one of the best. In fact, everyone is a unique individual and will have their own views and opinions. They will not be exactly the same. It is just that it is easy to be led by rigid education to have similar ideas, or to follow others’ success when they see it.
A blog is a place to express your thoughts and opinions. If you dare to say what you want to say and write in your own style, you can make a difference.
You can refer to various food critic books, learn how experts explain their opinions, and invest time in honing them.
2. Goal──become editor-in-chief
Another way to become the best is to aim to move up the ranks. For example, if your role is currently an editor, then find a way to have the ability of a chief editor.
If your information compilation and description skills are very good and you have become a qualified editor, the bottleneck after a period of time will be that everyone is a qualified editor. What are you going to do to win over others?
If you cover up the website name, there will be no sense of inconsistency if your article is placed on someone else’s website, which means that it will not be surprising if this article appears anywhere. It is a pity, because it means that everyone can write such an article, and it also means that such an article is similar to a farm article. Do we want our blogs to become like OEM farms, just used to earn ad clicks? (Actually, farms actually hire editors like this)
As bloggers, we have the right to choose. We are not hired by anyone. We can also choose to write articles at column level and not be satisfied with editor level.
As long as you are willing to hone yourself and believe that your goal is to become the editor-in-chief, you will be able to outperform all editors on the market in the future.
3. Goal to become an expert
Food tourism websites can also have goals from different angles, such as focusing on high-quality photography, focusing on high-end restaurants, focusing on tourism to special countries, etc. This part depends on personal preference, ability, and resources.
If you have a way to become an expert in different entry points, you can win in the market.
- Do you regard blogging as a career?
This is the conclusion of this article. I don’t recommend taking blogging as a career from the beginning unless you are prepared before you start.
My SEO articles constantly emphasize that “Content is King”. Product is the most important, in fact, it is the concept of “best in class” that has been repeatedly emphasized in this article. Make sure you have become a leader before entering the market, otherwise you will encounter the “apprentice dilemma” mentioned earlier.
How long does it take to become the best? I believe it will not be two or three months, nor will it be a year.
A blogger is not like being a businessman or an apprentice. There are seniors and masters who will guide you step by step and learn professional knowledge every day. Even if an apprentice trains every day, it will take several years to learn. Bloggers can only explore on their own, find courses, and watch the websites of seniors. After investing so much time, I still don’t know if I can make a difference, and I don’t have a fixed income. Do you think it’s suitable for me to make a living?
Therefore, I suggest that bloggers should have a regular job and not let their blog affect their livelihood. If after writing and practicing for a few years, you feel that you are not bad and better than similar websites; or if you find a profitable model through the website, then you can commercialize it and enter the market.
Just like stocks, you have the choice of when to enter the market. If you don’t enter the market rashly, you will not lose. Just make sure that when the website is commercialized, you are indeed the best, and then you can choose to resign and devote yourself full-time. If you enter the market at this time, you will not lose time for self-growth; you will not invest resources in the wrong direction for the sake of livelihood and traffic, causing the website to lose the opportunity to move to the next level.
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★This article author Wayne Fu, the most in-depth research topic is Blogger, and also delved into many application experiences related to the Internet and cloud. Thank you for the permission to reprint, hereby thank you.
★ Image source: Pixabay
Further reading
- “The Little Voice of Vista”: How to write an excellent food journal
- “Vista’s Little Voice”: Why I still run a blog
- 12/26《Updated every day, feel life》Create it, Feel it, Love it - 2020 Creator Party Documentary: Optimize the life operating system and be the best version of yourself
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