Many bloggers think that the “About” page is where blog readers can find out more details about a blogger. That is probably true. It is in my view the only place so far where I only talk about myself in order to let you know who or what “Bes Zain” is. Over the year, I have realized that another way to find out more about a blogger is to see how that blogger acts and behaves on their site. A blogger is how he or she blogs.
Ronald tagged me with a meme called “5 Reasons I Blog.” I like this meme as it will hopefully help you more compared to other memes, since it can show you the reasons that bloggers think are the driving force behind their blogs. If you wish, you can also read my introductory article that explains what memes are.
I am seeing a continuing trend online where many bloggers, who say publicly that they cannot reply to all the e-mails and comments they get, do respond to all comments and e-mails they get by famous bloggers. Before gaining any significant traffic, these bloggers spent their early blogging days appreciating every comment they got as if it was gold. Later, as traffic increased and they got more blog readers, these bloggers started focusing on responding to comments made only by bloggers who talked about making a lot of money on their own blogs. It is as if the concept of appreciating the gold in every comment was overcome by the idea of worshiping those who had gold.
Last week Daniel suggested that blog writers should stick to the point in their posts. While I agree with the point, I realize that sometimes it is hard to figure out what to share and what to avoid writing in posts. Things you write in your posts may be extremely important to you, but your readers may find them boring. So what should you do?
If you had a choice to spend most of your life working hard and not being happy, while hoping for very happy and enjoyable last few days of life, would you choose it? The first thought that comes to my mind regarding this is about the lives spent being unhappy and at the same time being focussed for almost 60 years in order to be financially independent during retirement. I would not want to lead such a life, and I am not going to.
I recently read a post by Daniel in which he talked about having emergency posts. This prompted me to comment and realize that scheduling posts in advance can be go along with having emergency posts. This concept can be applied to the offline world too. Planning and starting your tasks early can help reduce stress and avoid problems you may face later on.
Getting comments from people makes many bloggers happy. Increasing number of comments usually shows that the number of people reading your blog is increasing. You will, however, run into comments from time to time that criticize what you have to say. People may disagree with your opinions, or they may be offended by what you suggest through your writing. If you can plan out any reactions you may have to comments that criticize you or your blog, you will win over people who may not agree with what you have to say. I would like to talk and share with you an important concept that helps me everyday with this. I call it “The Art Of Reacting To Criticizing Comments.”
Personal blogs are probably the most common types of blogs you see everyday. While it may be easy to write about something personal in your life, it is hard to avoid the myths that people believe in when it comes to writing personal blogs. In this article I will talk about 5 myths that many personal bloggers believe in, and I will also talk about the dangers of believing such myths.
People do different things in order to achieve different results. Many of us usually make goals every now and then in order to achieve certain results. Even though aiming for certain results is a wonderful thing, you should avoid aiming for a lot of results at once. Doing so would affect the important goals you should be solely focusing on. Trying to achieve everything at the same time will probably result in low quality results for most of your goals. Aiming for fewer and more specific goals will result in better results and a higher level of achievement.
Many people have emotions running inside of them all the time, even when they do not show those emotions to others. When writing for blogs, you usually tend to focus on your emotions related to what you want to write about in order to come up with content. Sometimes, you depend on your emotions to tell you the topics you should write about. You should identify the situations when your emotions dictate your blog posts and the situations when you use your emotions as aiding tools if you want to find out how your emotions about different things affect your blogging.
Blogging online is similar to any offline activity. Just like with daily activities, if you feel motivated and passionate about blogging, you can come up with a lot of things to do and talk about on your blog. When you do not feel the presence of any encouragement, whether internal or external, you tend to drift off and start treating blogging as something that is a necessity instead of something that you like doing. I recently came across a situation which made me realize how important it is to interact with other bloggers and blogs in order to add more interest in your daily blogging routine. Such an interaction can help reignite your interest in blogging if you feel bored about the whole concept of blogging.
A day after I posted about winning the 2nd prize for the WTLC Blog Essay Competition, I found out that Ronald had randomly picked me as the winner of the Ronalfy Comment Contest. I got the $50 Amazon gift certificate the same night Ronald announced the results. Thank you Ronald. 
If you are thinking of setting up online goals this year, one of the most important things you can do is to realize whether you want to be goal-oriented or action-oriented. If you are goal-oriented, your main focus will be on the results and not the process. If you are action-oriented, your main focus will be on the process and not the results. Figuring out which type of person you want to be for each of your online goals can be crucial to the success of those goals.
