How To Win The Blogging Grand Prix

I did a go kart Grand Prix yesterday. The format was that we ran several heats, each time starting from a different grid position, and then our points were totted up to produce a winner. There were seven of us, so the lowest starting position was 7th. The key to remember is that one serious mistake - a spin, or hitting a barrier, basically means a last place, there isn't enough time on each heat to recover.

The event was won by the guy who did best from his races at the back of the grid, and I was interested to analyse his tactics.

Safety

Basically, he realised that it was quite easy to win from the front - all you had to do was keep it steady and stay on the racing line. Without mistakes, it was almost impossible to pass in similarly powered karts. It was a zero risk strategy, watching people behind all the time and reacting.

Some Risk

From the middle of the field, his focus was on gaining one or two places. He'd push as hard as he could, remaining close enough to pressure the driver in front, and then capitalise if and when they went wide or hesitated for a moment. Still pretty low risk, but successful.

"Balls out"

And when he was in the last two places he absolutely went for it - he had nothing to lose, so he risked every marginal overtake, went for the half gaps and took every chance he saw. It was a high risk strategy, but even if he had crashed, he was still going to finish last in terms of points. The risk appears high, but doesn't really exist. Coming last when you're starting last is no problem.

Blogging

Inevitably, I started to relate these tactics to blogging. There are a number of skills associated with being a successful blogger, and like all skills, each of us will excel (and struggle) with certain of them. Let's imagine that a particular blogger's skills, in order of competence go like this:

• Writing great content
• Designing a cool looking site
• Interacting on social media
• Writing guest posts
• Promoting the blog

Human nature dictates that this blogger will enjoy, and therefore spend most time doing the first two, and put the least effort into the last two.

But if we follow the logic of the go kart grand prix, what he should be doing is putting more effort and taking more risk with writing guest posts and promoting the blog, on the grounds that he has the most to gain and the least to lose with that strategy. If he's already a pretty good writer, putting 10% more into the writing won't have a significant impact, but putting the same 10% extra into blog promotion could do so.

It's a bit like weight loss. If you start out really fat, then you'll lose significant weight in the beginning, but as you close on your goal (get "better" at it) you won't be achieving the same levels of weight loss.

Or to put it another way, when I was a top class swimmer, shaving 3 tenths off my personal best was a season long job. Since I restarted (and I'm now a distinctly average swimmer) I've been able to improve my times by five tenths every week.

So the lesson for me is to focus on and put effort into the things I'm not good at, and to take some risks in those areas. Leave the things I'm already good at alone, and just keep doing them.

What are your thoughts?

These are interesting too:

1/ Hitting the blogging wall

2/ Choosing a subject for your first book

3/ How to do sell an affiliate product

Have you read Beyond Blogging yet?