One of the easiest ways to get stuck in a blogging rut is to spend too much time reading the same blogs. In this, the seventh and last article in my Most Important Blog Lessons Series, I’ll be talking about ways to branch out and how this can benefit your blog.

In case you missed any of the first six lessons in this series, here they are:

It is certainly important to know what is going on in your niche and be involved with other related bloggers, but sometimes the way to find the best new thing it to think outside the box. In this case, the box is your niche and thinking is searching.

A good place to look for popular blogs in other niches is to check out Technorati. Technorati, for any of you who don’t know, is a portal site for blogs of all kinds. You defintely want your blog listed there (it’s free) and then you want to go look at some categories and lists. Find out who is tops in Architecture or Cycling. You’ll get some great design ideas that might not be common in your niche and you might make some contacts that can help you.

By networking with folks in seemingly unrelated niches, you can often find a common ground that will allow you both to benefit. For example, Pajama Professional isn’t about health and fitness, but I would welcome a guest post from a health and fitness guru who could speak to those of use sedentary professionals. It’s about looking beyond your competition for a win-win situation.

There are literally endless (okay, maybe not endless, but more than you could get to in your lifetime) websites out there to be found and behind each of those sites is at least one person. Chances are, that person wants their blog to grow just as much as you want yours to. So be creative, get out there and find commonality where there seems not to be.

The last thing I want to say to sum up this post – and this series in general – is that when you’re a blogger it’s hard to know the very best way to spend your time. It’s different for everyone, but the key is to try things out. If the ROI on your time is worthwhile, stick wtih it. If you feel like you’re wasting your time, just stop. Just remember that if you want your blog to stand out, you can’t just write endlessly in a vacuum. You must try new things, visit new places (blogs and sites) in order to present the interesting, original content that makes readers come back for more.

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  • Ron
    Great tips, thank you. I will use this for my blog.
  • Hi! Its the ideas which keep me out from the destructions,Thanks for the nice blog and its very effective one which I really feel.so keep up blogging and stay tune with me.
  • Nice post i agree with you,you are doing good job.All the best for feature.
  • These good blog lessons and good explanation. Technorati is good platform for find blogs. Thanks for information.
  • thank you for sharing this.
  • 1. Focus on real time. For the socially connected online, there is little use for yet another place to talk to your friends. If anything, we all have too many of those to start with. But a site dedicated to RIGHT NOW stands out. It's useful in a way that none of the other sites we use are.
    2. Skip the extra step. Approving every friend request can be a lot of work - even if you're not the most popular of people. It does make sense on most social networks, but when it comes to posting updates on Twitter, if you do it publicly, anyone can follow you without approval. The result is that any user's audience on Twitter can grow exponentially without barriers.
    3. Force your customers to do less. If you have ever heard the saying that "less is more" - Twitter is the ultimate proof of that. The forced 140 character messages have made us all refocus on brevity, and as a result of this volume decrease, those of us that are constantly overcommunicated look to the site as the one place where we can still feel that we are on top of the flood of communication that rules our lives.
    4. Build enough evangelists to compensate when things go wrong. One of the most well known facts about Twitter is that the service has been notoriously unreliable and crashed frequently. Though it is much improved from those days, the site still goes down or loses functionality relatively regularly. Yet it has managed to build up enough power users and evangelists, that people forgive their down times and keep coming back.
    5. Integrate with the most popular competition. The single most useful feature I personally uncovered from Twitter was the ability to integrate it into my Facebook page so that may Twitter updates also become my status on Facebook. This demonstrates a fact that many entrepreneurs already know - by integrating with your competition where your "customers" currently are, you make it easier for them to migrate over to your site.
    6. Launch where your influencers are. A big reason for the early success of Twitter was their launch at the SXSW Interactive festival two years ago. It was a place where all the influencers that matters for Twitter were already going to be and putting the site in front of them there allowed them to become word of mouth ambassadors for the site following the event.
    7. Offer a public ranking or authority. The final element that has helped Twitter to succeed is that it has a built in authority ranking with the number of followers you have. This is located right beneath your username on the site and it's high visibility means that it is easily the ultimate metric for anyone using the site. And you can't help but want that number to go higher.
  • This list is great. Thanks for sharing.
  • Technorati is a great tool for finging blogs.
  • Love the article, and I seriously look forward to more like it!
  • Thanks to give this important link of blogging.it is very useful for me.nice post dear.i will follow all the ideas which you writing in this post.
  • Thanks for the links for all good lessons for blog. Its helpful to me for my blog.
  • I’ll be talking about ways to branch out and how this can benefit your blog.
  • great post
  • I agree as well, a good blog is well rounded and provides perspective from different angles. Dont be afraid to post around a subject, not just the subject itself. Thanks
  • Awesome list. I've used some of the things you are promoting and they truly do work.
  • Thanks for this. Another good way to shake it up is indeed cross posting where you find a blogger with a common thread such as travel (who doesn't like travel) and put it in the context of your blog.
  • Thanks for sharing this information.
  • thanks for sharing this information I like it and I gain some knowledge about your topic..

    thanks you very much,,
  • Thank you for another great article. Where else could anyone get that kind of information in such a perfect way of presentation.
  • Your final point is spot on - you need to know when to just walk away sometimes - there's always another opportunity just around the corner
  • when it will be come your eight lesson.i will waiting it.but really great job.keep it up..dear..
  • Ken
    Are you going to have Lesson Eight? I read all your lessons, awesome stuff.
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