Nomad Challenge

The place where everyone knows your name. (photo by Caitlinator/Flickr)

I must say, although I am still new to the world of blogging and internet marketing, I am very impressed with the blogging community, particularly with some well-established bloggers. And from what I can tell, the type of generosity they have displayed recently is more the norm rather than the exception among the community.

Two blogs that I often read, The Writers Manifesto and ProBlogger, recently included a list of links to pages of some of their readers. On The Writers Manifesto blog, Monika Mundell compiled a list herself of various posts from her readers in her own post titled “Success Principles As Seen By My Readers.” Then earlier this week, Darren Rowse ran an interesting experiment of sorts with his ProBlogger Social Media Love-In. He basically asked his readers if they were active on various social media sites, and if they wanted to network with other bloggers, told them to feel free to include links to their profiles.

I was pleasantly surprised to find my opening post included on Monika’s list, and all of us on it were very grateful to her. It was a very nice show of appreciation on her part to introduce us all to each other. After reading Darren’s post and seeing that a few people had decided to list their pages in the comments section, I decided why not and put links to my Twitter, Facebook and MySpace pages. I didn’t think much of it at the time, seemed like a nice gesture on Darren’s part, and yet little did I know what was in store…

It turns out the Twitter links were very popular as almost immediately my email was turning up Twitter follow notifications like there was no tomorrow! And the notifications are still coming in today! I hadn’t used Twitter very much before (it was still on my “to learn” list) and now I went from six followers to over 100 in a matter of a few days. You can find the complete list of ProBlogger’s 538 twitter users that blog here (I’m no. 175 on there).

What have these two acts of kindness done for my blog? Well a lot more in terms of bringing in visitors than I had been doing, that’s for sure! Admittedly I haven’t gotten around to doing much promoting of my website yet (shame Kevin!). Prior to these two listings, I only had a few visitors here and there from a few friends who I have talked to about it and a few others who I either contacted directly or may have seen me comment on another site.

And while my traffic numbers are still very modest, compared to what they were before they have skyrocketed (relatively speaking, of course). I even got a few encouraging messages from some of my new Twitter friends saying they checked out my blog and enjoyed it! All this has gotten me very excited. Being an athlete, I compare seeing this first wave of visitors and comments to scoring your first goal or winning your first match. I actually do remember the emotions from my first soccer goal from when I was six very vividly.

On a similar note, I would be remissed if I didn’t give thanks to a couple other bloggers, Penelope Trunk and Caroline Middlebrook, who recently took the time to answer an email I sent, in a very timely manner I must add. I’m sure they are very busy so I appreciate that they took the time out of their day to respond. It may be a simple act, and yet it has helped me with my blogging in these early stages. Little things like that do go a long way.

These acts of generosity have opened my eyes more to the culture of the blogging world while introducing me to many other fascinating bloggers of various topics, of which I may not have found otherwise. It makes sense, in order to succeed in blogging (or business for that matter), that one must provide value to their readers (or customers). I get the impression that this sort of collaboration and interdependence has been picking up steam among those on the cutting edge for some time now, which is a nice trend to see.

I mentioned Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People book in an earlier post, and I bring it up again as interdependence was a big theme of his. His seven habits are meant to guide people from dependence, to independence, to interdependence. What does that mean exactly? Dictionary.com defines the term interdependent as “mutually dependent; depending on each other”, while Wikipedia states that interdependence “can also be defined as the interconnectedness and the reliance on one another socially, economically, environmentally and politically.”.

I think it is important to note that like it or not, we are all interdependent of one another, and life itself is interdependent. Even more so these days with globalization and the power of the internet and other communication technologies. It’s comforting to see that more and more people, especially those who are in a position of influence, are embracing this concept.

Cheers, mates! (photo by gamma.amore/flickr)

Mentioning these folks on this blog will likely not have the same sort of impact on them as they have had on me and my blog. I simply don’t possess the same amount of influence at this time. This charitable attitude is something I intend to keep paying forward though as I go along. Generosity begets generosity, and that is a VERY good thing. Who knows, I could always buy them a drink should our paths ever cross in person! It would be the least I could do.

On that note, to Monika, Darren, Penelope, Caroline and all my fellow bloggers and readers out there; thank you, and here’s to all our success and happiness. Cheers!