“Trying” to be an influential blogger derails your blogging career. Force negates. Trying often leads to straining, struggling, and quitting. The moment you try to be someone of influence, you skip the process you need to focus on to be that person of influence.
Please make this important distinction between trying to be a blogging influencer and being a blogging influencer. Two totally different intents here.
I advise you to be an influential blogger.
I even wrote an entire eBook on how to influence people.
Plus I teach you how to be an influential blogger in 6 months or less. But trying hard to be influential is a mistake bloggers often make because influencing is not labels, but generous service.
Trying to be an influential blogger is like trying hard to be a doctor; you cannot force or speed up the process.
Doctors learn, study, practice, yield serious skills and in time, comes the prestige of being a doctor. Make a full commitment for years to mastering your medical craft. Focus on the process. Eventually, the accolades flow in surely, slowly but steadily.
Being influential online is similar. Learn, study, practice, become skilled, THEN you become influential, based on the perception of readers.
The Mistake of Trying to Be an Influential Blogger
Almost all bloggers I see who try to become influential make a fundamental mistake: they try desperately or greedily to add the influencer label to their name when they did not put in time and energy to earn that label.
Trying to be an influencer guarantees you skip all steps to become influential. If you skip steps, you do not become influential. If you call yourself an influencer but skip steps to become an influencer, you never become influential. Trusting the process and working the process makes you influential.
Like trying to be any person of note, if you want the rewards before putting in the time, energy and generous service, you never become the influential blogger because labels arrive well after the work is done.
“Trying to Be Influential” Is Different than “Serving”
Do you want to become an influential blogger? Stop trying to be someone who people follow and listen to.
Toss that aside. Serve people generously. Help people. Expect nothing. Trying to be well known is different than helping people for free.
Wanting fame is different than helping people live their dreams.
Can you see how the two roles differ?
Trying to be influential puts all attention and energy on yourself.
Serving people generously puts all attention and energy on other people.
Can you guess how people become influential bloggers?
Bloggers generously serve people freely for a while before being seen as influencers. Think 100’s to 1000’s of hours, when pondering the long time it takes to serve people generously before gaining influencer status.
Servants become influential bloggers. Generous people become influential bloggers.
Detached people become influential bloggers. People who help people freely become influential bloggers. It ain’t about you.
It’s about helping people. Guest post on blogs. Open your blog to guest posting. Feature bloggers on your blog.
Mention bloggers on social media. Answer questions on Quora.
If you want people to follow you and to listen to you, help people generously.
The easiest way to influence the masses is through one generous act at a time.
Focus on People
I never seize this guest posting opportunity if I tried like heck to be seen as influential because I’d publish to my blog and nowhere else. Focusing on yourself solely is a bad idea because blogging success flows through service, not self-service.
Everything would be about me versus focusing on other people. Influence would be lost. Not good. Mainly because other human beings label you as an influencer to be perceived as an influencer.
But since I focus on helping and service folks with no strings attached I find it easier to influence people freely.
Generous bloggers become influential bloggers. Generous bloggers improve their skills and increase their exposure.
Skilled bloggers who appear everywhere get labeled as influencers.
None of these folks try to be influential; they are just humble servants.
Focus heavily on fulfilling the process of gaining influence. Every influencer you know simply helped people generously for a long time to increase their skills, exposure and credibility to influencer levels.
Stop trying to be an influencer. Get busy BEING an influencer now before becoming an influencer. Be as an influencer be’s. Generously help people for a bit.
Eventually, you could care less about labels because you just want to help people.
This is the influential blogger frame of mind.
