The Battles We Wage
As a blogger we want to rise to the top. We want our articles to be found, shared, commented upon as that ultimately draws attention to us and makes us achieve our goals. We want to be noticed and most of the time will stop at nothing, so we think. There is the little voice inside us called integrity that comes out. If I share you will you share me? Does that play a role? Sure it does. Should it? Nah, but we are human and that does matter. We build communities treating people better than we want to be treated and hope we surround ourselves with people that share that same sentiment but we know that is so not true.
There are some that seem to jump onto circuit at what seems out of nowhere. Who the hell are they and why are they getting so much attention? I have been here day after day, week after week writing and writing, sharing and engaging and they are getting so much attention. We look at their blog and think, well it is good but it is not all that great. Then we start to play detective and see what they did to get to where they are. Was it simply consistently writing great content? Well maybe there blog is better than ours we start to think or maybe, just maybe, they sold their soul for a retweets, comments and traffic.
The Battles We Wage
We wage battles within ourselves. We have goals for the blog, we have unrealistic realistic expectations of what success we will have. We will get 50,000 + followers on Twitter, 50+ comments each day, 500 retweets, all within 6-12 months. Everyone talks about how easy it is, give some free tips so if we follow that, we will attain these goals. As many laugh we cannot deny that we had some high expectations. Then we think about those other people and how did they attain all that so fast? What are we doing wrong as we deserve just as much attention as them. Well that is our opinion and to many times is the only one that matter. Then we start to think … did they ask for retweets from the a-listers; have meetings, were given inside advice or is it something more (never thinking they worked really hard for years and were just never on our radar).
Integrity in Blogging
We all have integrity. While it may not seem like some have any, we have to believe that they do. Maybe I live in a fantasy world or have been incredibly lucky in my connections. Growing in social media is being there before the sale. Does this mean that to attain our goals we have to go out there and compromise what we believe in by asking for retweets, comments, mentions from someone bigger than us and sometimes even out of our general audience? This feels so dirty as being someone who likes to earn the good old fashioned way, it can be a struggle.
Then I think that we have to consider that there are thousands of people vying for the same attention and sharing the stage. Does this attention mean that we have to sell our souls and ask for that retweet in DM’s, “out” someone or write repetitive viscous blogs, tweets and comments attacking someone so that we can hit the radar of the a-listers and ride their coattails? Is this the only way to push someone else aside and achieve the instant success that we feel we deserve? It could be argued that this way a foundation is being built, we are meeting our standards despite being borrowed eyes and short lived. People will start talking and the shift is to maximizing the popularity by shoving every thought, idea, blog post, product or service offering down the throats of this new audience. Mindset is to “steal” the audience from the a-lister and give the same if not better offering so they will forget the other person(s). Laugh all you want, but we have seen it in action. It makes us question: Are there any self standards that are left or is everything for sale?
Are We Selling Our Souls With Asking?
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