What can Bloggers learn from Babies?
This is another of those posts where you’ll have to hang on in there at the beginning, just getting past the title may be a struggle for some, but stick with me, and you won’t regret it. Right, on to the point. Babies, they are amazing. We all started off as one, and every single baby out there is phenomenal at certain tasks. So what can you, a seasoned blogger, learn from a baby. What wisdom can a baby impart to you? Well, let’s look at what babies do, and find out.
Constantly Learning
At no other point in your life will you assimilate as much information as when you are a baby. It’s as simple as that. And while babies look fairly simple, there are a couple of crucial factors that make babies into these amazing information assimilators. Firstly, babies are very curious. If they see something, they want to touch it, smell it, put it in their mouth and taste it. They use all their senses to assess something. You can apply the same approach to any research you do for your blog. Try looking at something from a babies angle, explore every crevis and don’t rely on the obvious sources, taste it. Secondly, babies are always looking around, they always have their eyes wide open, exploring. You should be doing this. Lastly babies question everything. This continues well into childhood and then, mostly, gets taught and trained out of us. Don’t let that happen to you. Accepting things at face value can be dangerous, question it, research it, and be sure you are happy with all the facets of the facts.
Growing
A bit obvious this one. The rate at which a baby grows is nothing short of staggering. While growing this quickly can be harmfull, babies are sure they have the basics covered to allow and support this growth. We can all learn from this approach. Get the fundamentals and the foundations right, and then grow on top of them. You’ll notice that when a baby is born, the head and eyes are disproportionately large. What does this tell us? Well, the brain is proportionally bigger at the start, with the body growing to match. The eyes are also almost fully sized at birth. This means that right from the very start the basic facilities to reason, look, watch, learn and think are there. These are essentially what you should be focusing on for your blog in the early days. Watching for opportunities and writing the foundations of some great content.
Adapting
When a baby is crawling around the floor and sees a cookie on the table, it’s not necessary it’s ability to grow that allows it to eat said tasty treat. It’s the babies ability to adapt to it’s surroundings. i.e. it stands up. To put this into more actionable terminology, the baby sees a goal (the cookie), identifies the benefit of the goal (tasty treat) and then figures out a way to adapt so it can achieve the goal. There are many ways in which you can apply this to your blog, from changing focus to better target a niche topic to adding new features to your blog (forums, job boards etc). The important thing to remember is, be prepared to adapt and be prepared to do it while growing.
Become Immune
Babies crank up their immune system fairly quickly. This is done through a combination of methods, one of which is to expose themselves to small amounts of dangerous viruses so their body can create anti bodies. While I’m not suggesting you go out of your way to experience the negative aspects of the internet, and blogging, it is good to be exposed to them in some way. This may be through reading other’s experiences. Just remember to learn from those experiences so if you do have to deal with them, you will be prepared (and your anti-bodies will be ready!).
Don’t got it Alone
Babies can’t survive on their own. This is also true of new blogs. You need traffic from somewhere, and you will probably need help to achieve your goals. While it may make you feel vulnerable, relying on other people, there really is nothing bad about it at all. Just be prepared for the day when you outgrow your mother and branch out on your own.
I hope this article gave you something to think about. I’ve broadly covered ways in which offline things can be used in blogging previously, and I’d like to keep running with it as theme. Have you got any observations about your non-blogging life that you have learnt from, and then used that knowledge in blogging?
I like the last point. You have depend on some other sites to promote yourself. It takes a lot of work though on your part to make sure the blogging community “takes care of you”.
I think that’s a very good point Edward. Many bloggers, upon first starting out, go for the link baiting approach to get traffic. This usually involves just being controversial or negative about someone/thing. After doing this, they then wonder why the blogging community isn’t accepting of them. It may be old fashioned, but I always thing you need to maintain a modicum of niceness.
I like the last point the most. For newbies like me, it is very ambitious to do all these things yourself and not ask for other people to help you in anyway possible.