Blogger's Worst Enemy: Fear of Rejection
It is often said that the worst enemy you have is yourself and in blogging this phrase is true 100%, it is possible that we have a lot to offer and that our articles are really valuable, But if we do not dare to show it to other people, it is very difficult for someone to read us or to take us seriously.
We can wait for the search engines to work their magic, or we can take an active stance to obtain a loyal audience long before positioning ourselves well, indeed, if you can get people to talk about you and link to you, it is much easier to position yourself well.
The fear of rejection is what prevents us from asking our boss for a raise, asking a girl we like out or not dare to ask to write as a guest on a blog or website better established than ours, to invite to read an article of ours or not to contradict an "authority".
Sometimes we are going to fail and other times we are going to be successful, the important thing is to know that the world is not ending nor is our reputation going to the ground ... we are not the center of the universe.
One of the best examples of success I had was when I was fairly new to Twitter and started following @chicaseo, she gave advice to reduce the bounce rate and I contradicted her saying that it is only a data and is not good or bad by itself, it depends on the context.
Soon I ended up writing a guest post on his blog that won me many loyal readers, perhaps without that contradiction, you wouldn't be reading me today.
Then we also became Twitter friends, I was invited to SEOCanthine, etc.
An example of a very successful failure was when in ProBlogger wrote about blogs that are not in English (Bloggers from non-english backgrounds) I saw that the biggest problem that all non-English bloggers faced was monetization.
I wrote an article with tips for monetizing a local audience with courses or consulting and sent it to Darren Rowse (owner of Problogger), if my article was approved I was going to gain a lot of "reputation", otherwise ... NOTHING WAS HAPPENING!
In the end my article was not published and Darren's response was this:
thanks for the offer of a post but at this point I'm probably going to compile some of the comments left into a post rather than just have a single guest post on the topic.
Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments and I may be able to use some of them in a post.
thanks for your interest!
Darren
No one came to beat me up, my Twitter followers did not disappear, a thousand posts were not put together to make fun of me, nothing.
However, not having sent that article that day would continue to weigh on my conscience, thinking about what it could have been, the chances are 50-50 of winning ... we can win a lot and we don't lose anything, it's worth trying!
By the way, I have a very good memory in my inbox, it's something like an autograph from a musician you're a fan of.
So here are two tips that you can apply if you have good content and you think it's worth spreading:
1) Ask to write as a guest: Most bloggers and I accept articles from contributors, generally it is an informational article in which a short biography, some photograph and a link to the blog or website of the guest are added.
This helps you make yourself known to established audiences with great interest in your topic.
2) Talk to the "stars": You can ALWAYS contribute something to a conversation, even if it seems that someone knows everything, you may be surprised how some advice or point of view is very useful and they appreciate it.
This is the best way to create relationships that are worthwhile and that will pay off in the short, medium and long term.
Maybe a little less embarrassment is all it takes to grow your audience.
