Paying It Forward: Helping Fellow Bloggers and Building a Better Community

Good day, and welcome to day 26 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and episode 26 of the ProBlogger Podcast where today, I’m issuing you with another challenge. Today’s challenge is to not focus on your own blog, but to focus on someone else’s, and to improve another blog. This could lead to all kinds of wonderful relationships or collaborations with other bloggers but you also should learn something today about your own blogging. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/26.

Hi there. It’s Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 26 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Today, I want to challenge you to help another blogger achieve their goals in some way, to improve another person’s blog. Now, this might sound a little counterintuitive. You might ask, isn’t this 31 days about improving my blog? Well, yes, it is, but one of the ways you can do this is to be outward-focused in your own blogging.

I found over the years that sometimes when I focus on helping someone else in my blogging or other areas of my life that it comes back to help me in different ways. Some people might call it karma. I think it’s just being a good human being in many ways. It’s also really satisfying to do and might give you a little bit of burst of energy to see someone else reach their goals in some way. You might also learn a thing or two about your own blog by doing it.

There are many ways that you can help other bloggers achieve their goals. Some of them are really big and some of them are really small. I want to encourage you to do something today. Don’t just leave 50 comments on 50 blogs and help 50 bloggers. Focus upon one today. Do something as significant as you can for them.

There’s a whole heap of things you could do. I’ll just give you a few examples, but really let your own creative juices flow and look around you at the bloggers that you interact with, that you read, and find something that suits their needs in some way.

The other question to ask to help you identify what would help another blogger or achieve their goals is to ask the question about your own blog. What would help you the most if another blog did something for you? That may just identify the answer to what you do for someone else today. 

Let me give you a few examples. Firstly and probably the most simply, leave some helpful and insightful comments on someone else’s blog. This is probably the most simple thing and I would encourage you to go a little bit beyond this one if you can.

Another thing you might want to do if another blogger is struggling for content at the moment, maybe you want to offer to write a high-quality guest post for their readers. I know this has helped me over the years when I’ve gone on holiday, and I’ve announced I’m going away. Things are going to be a little sparse around here. It’s amazing what someone offering to help you create some content does. It takes a little bit of pressure off.

Times where I’ve been sick as well has been really helpful. So, maybe offer to create some content. Maybe it’s about sending them some traffic. You might want to write a post about another blogger. I’ve seen bloggers do this numerous times over the years. They recommend a blog that they really love and they give some reasons why their readers should read it, just purely self-promotion of this other blogger.

You could do the same thing on social media as well. I know in some of the blogs that I’ve interacted with over the years that it can really help a blog a lot to get a share on Facebook from another blog, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, any of these places. Share a link to another blogger today. Maybe just recommend your readers subscribe to another blog.

[00:04:22] blogger to send an email out to their list that purely was a recommendation that their readers subscribed to someone else and giving some good reasons as to why to do that. Their readers benefited because I got some great content from this other blogger and of course the other blogger benefited, too.

Email the blogger with some suggested topics that you’d love to see them cover. We talked about the idea of brainstorming new post ideas for your blog, and how helpful that can be to help you get through times of bloggers block. Other bloggers are probably struggling with that as well. Shoot them an email and just say, I don’t know if you ever would love to brainstorm topics together, but here are a few ideas that I’ve come up with that might be helpful for your blog.

You might just find that that helps that blogger through a time of bloggers block. The offer to do it in an ongoing way (perhaps on a Facebook group or via email) might be something that that blogger might appreciate as well, and again, that might help you with your own blogging. Too.

If you’re a more experienced blogger, there are heaps of things that you could do. Maybe email a new blogger and offer to spend some time with them answering questions, or start a mentoring group for a few new bloggers.

I’ve seen this in my wife’s own blogging over the last year or two. She started blogging two years ago. A more experienced blogger reached out to her and offered for her to join a little mentoring group that she’d started. This gave Vanessa’s blog a lot of life. In the last six months, she started her own mentoring group for other new bloggers. She’s paying it forward. This doesn’t just help the people that are in her mentoring group that she’s helping, it actually helps her as well. Everyone’s blog benefits from it.

If you have coding, or design, or SEO, or some other skill, maybe offer another blogger some assistance, so you could do with some help in those areas. If you’ve got an advertiser on your blog, offer to introduce that advertiser to another blogger. You might just find that you help that other blogger to generate some income. If you promote affiliate programs on your blog that works well for you, maybe you could suggest to another blogger in a new niche and affiliate program.

Maybe you could write an email to another blogger and just encourage them. Tell them about a post that they’ve written that it’s encouraged you. Maybe you want to send them a gift of some kind, maybe an ebook that you’ve written that you think they might find helpful, or maybe you want to actually buy something, an ebook that someone else has written or a little physical gift that you could send them in the mail.

All of these things could potentially really help another blogger on their own journey. There’s no limit to what you could do today, the keys to doing something as significant as you’re able for another blogger.

If there’s no acknowledgment from the other blogger, don’t despair. Maybe they missed it, maybe they’re busy, maybe they’ve got across this is going on. Move on and do it for someone else. Make this paying it forward in some ways a part of your regular blogging, and you’re going to create an amazing impression upon other bloggers. That can only result in good things.

I hope you find today’s challenge fun, that it brings a little life to someone else’s life and blog, and that in the long term, it might come back and help you in your own blogging. I hope you enjoyed today’s challenge. I’d love to hear what you did, how it impacted you at today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/26, where I summarize today’s show, give you some further reading but also give you that opportunity to share your feedback and to share what you did today. I look forward to chatting with you tomorrow on day 27 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.