Vision as the Core of Blog Improvement: 3 Clarifying Metaphors

September 18th, 2008 by Easton Ellsworth

Many people have asked me to help them make their blog more successful.

One of the most common questions I ask in reply is this: “What’s your overall vision for your blog? Where do you want it to take its target audience in the next 12-24 months?”

Once they answer that question, they’re ready to hear what I have to say about how to improve their blog and get the results they want. Here’s why the blog improvement process ultimately hangs from the feet of vision.

1. Vision is Light

I’m being abstract here, yes. But think of vision (or strategy) as light. The clearer your vision of what your blog can become and why you have it in the first place, the brighter the light shining on your blog and the easier it is to spot the areas in most dire need for improvement. The murkier your long-term goals, the darker your blog improvement blueprints and the harder it is to figure out the nuts and bolts of what you ought to do with it.

Take blog monetization/ROI, for instance. Sometimes the underlying long-term growth strategy for a blog is for it to generate ever-larger reams of money. On the other hand, maybe the blogger’s vision is to simply build a tight-knit community of friends who love the same niche subject. Can you see how the blog improvement process diverges depending on the nature of the path the blogger imagines traveling?

2. Vision is the Center; Processes are the Spokes

Picture a bicycle wheel. Your blog is that wheel. Your growth/ROI strategy for the blog (or one aspect of it) is the hub in the middle. All the spindly spokes sticking out from the center are the individual growth processes and methods and tactics you will use to make your blog worthwhile for you and those to whom you address it.

So if you’re looking to beautify your blog design, that’s the center of its own wheel. Make sure you get a razor-sharp picture of what constitutes that center. Maybe it’s that you want a better design in order to tip prospective customers over the edge and convert them into faithful followers. Maybe it’s that you really just want to attract more honeybees to the computer screen (in which case I recommend bright colors).

Once you decide where you want to end up, it becomes so much simpler to determine how to get there.

3. Vision is the Power to Point The Leaper

I love the mantra, “Leap and the net will appear.” Christine Kane was the first to teach it to me.

Imagine yourself on a platform suspended in space. Around you in every direction are invisible cargo nets hanging hammock-like in the black. I guarantee that if you truly leap, I’ll make sure you land in one of them.

You just have to decide which direction to jump in first.

So What?

So if you want someone like me to help you make your blog better, you need to think about your vision for the blog before anything else. Before you set a budget. Before you decide on a color scheme. Before you choose which flavor-of-the-month social media website you want to dominate.

And of course I’m willing to help you clarify that core.

Because with the core correctly placed, all else flows naturally.

Wooden Wheel Hub Spokes