My Very Best Blogging Advice

A few months before BlogHer ’11 began, I was asked to speak on a panel called “Your Blog Can Make You a Local Hero.” The title was so embarrassing to say out loud that I didn’t actually tell anyone I was on it.

I was also very worried that as soon as the panel started, some woman would stand up in the back and say, “I’m from Nashville and I’ve seen you giving extreme couponers the stink-eye in the checkout line at the Kroger’s. Let me tell you, Lindsay Ferrier, YOU ARE NO LOCAL HERO.”

Then there was the fact that the other two panelists were soooo much more accomplished than I am. Jaden Hair from Steamy Kitchen is a television chef and syndicated columnist. Darya Pino has a PhD in neuroscience  and a kazillion followers on Twitter. I’m just… me. I’ve done some cool things, yes, but at the root of it, I still think of myself as a stay-at-home-mom who also happens to have a website that does pretty well.

Well, we got started and the questions began coming from audience members and I was flabbergasted to find that a bunch of them were directed at me! And that’s when I realized that most of the audience members could totally relate to my personal situation. They didn’t have a lot of money to spend on a fancy web designer. They didn’t have eight hours a day to come up with a business strategy and hire a PR firm to promote them. They were women with full-time jobs, and moms with overscheduled lives, and yet they had a dream to do something cool on the Internet, just like I did.

The panel was ostensibly about how to use your own local media and connections for your blog as a launching pad in order to eventually get national attention. And we gave advice on how to do that. But a few key pieces of advice from the panel seemed to really resonate with the audience, so I thought I’d share them with you, too. They’re good for blogging, but they’re also good for anything else you’re trying to achieve.

First off, any success I’ve had throughout my career, whether as a television reporter and anchor or as a blogger, has had a lot to do with the fact that I never, ever, EVER give up.

I graduated from college with a degree in Broadcast News and sent out audition tapes to stations for six long months before I got a job offer. By that time, most of my fellow graduates had given up on getting a news job and taken jobs in related fields. But I just couldn’t fathom not being a reporter (and I had parents nice enough to let me live with them until I got hired as one), so I kept trying until someone eventually got tired of me harassing them and hired me.

The same has been true for me as a blogger. I told the audience that if you look at all the ideas I’ve pitched and submissions I’ve e-mailed, I probably have a 90% failure rate. That’s not exactly something I’ve chosen to share in my bio!

Instead my bio is filled with the products of my 10% success rate. It’s a rate I’m happy with, because those successes have, for me anyway, been AMAZING. But yeah, for every job I’ve gotten there have been (at least) ten I was passed over for. For every award my blog has received, there have been ten blog award groups that didn’t even consider me worthy of nomination.

And I’m okay with that.

In fact, I told the audience, I’m so okay with it that I actually keep a file with every single rejection letter I’ve ever received. I started it during my news days and PEOPLE. It is MASSIVE.

The reason for this file is that I decided way back in my single days that I would save those letters to show my children one day when they’re feeling rejected in their own budding careers. I want them to know that a stack of rejection letters is the mark of a successful person.

Because a successful person never. Gives. Up.

Another piece of advice I gave in the panel was something I did early on when I was trying to make a name for myself as an online writer. First, I made sure I had a clear idea in my head of where I wanted to be five years from that point. Once I had that goal firmly in place, I tried to do one thing every day to work toward that goal.

That could mean sending out an e-mail query or proposal to an editor. Or creating a Facebook fan page. Or keeping in touch with someone who might be able to help me out down the road. Or making my website more user friendly. I could spend 15 minutes on it or an hour. But I tried to do something every single day. And eventually, some of those somethings started paying off.

Finally, my favorite professor in college gave me a piece of advice that I’ve used throughout my career:

If you want to get to network, dress for network.

When I was a news reporter, it meant that I showed up for work each day dressed and behaving not like a 21-year-old college grad who was expected to shoot, report, and edit all of my own stories (which is what I was), but instead like the seasoned professionals I had interned with at CNN in Washington. I was myself, of course, and I was nice to everyone, but I definitely took lessons from the CNN reporters’ and anchors’ style and confidence and tried to apply them to my own situation.

Within two months, I was promoted to morning anchor.

Sure, it had to do with more than what I was wearing. But I’m sure that my appearance certainly didn’t hurt matters.

I love this advice even today, because it applies to so many situations. Professionally, dress and act like who you want to be. That could have something to do with the clothes you wear, but it also applies to your website. If you want your blog or site to be successful, make it look successful. Invest in a designer if you need to– and yes, some of them cost a bajillion dollars, but if you do your research (and learn to do some of it on your own), you can find a good designer who costs less. I know this because I’ve done it several times!

These are just a few things that came to mind during that panel discussion. Of course, BlogHer, like all blog conferences, was filled with great ideas and inspiration, and I know that many of you would love to go to a blog conference, but just don’t have the time or money to do it.

That’s why I’m ending this post with a little giveaway.

My friends Audrey McClelland and Colleen Padilla have just published The Digital Mom Handbook, which basically is a tutorial on how to start a career for yourself as a blogger. They interviewed me for the book and I was sent a copy of it… and I was so excited when I read it. Basically, The Digital Mom Handbook has much of the great advice that you get at a blog conference, at a tiny fraction of the cost. Audrey and Colleen interviewed tons of the most successful mom bloggers out there and got all their best tips on how they did it. It’s definitely worth a read if you’re thinking about trying to create a career for yourself online. And I get to give away three copies of the book!

If you want to enter to win it, just leave a comment on this post between now and Thursday, August 18th and I will choose three winners at random to receive a copy of the book. This giveaway is open to US residents only. One comment per person, please.

And if you have a question for me about blogging or your online career, feel free to ask me in the comments of this post. I’d be happy to help any way I can!

 

 

 

Image via John Ward/Flickr