Whoa. I just had quite an inspiration. Here I am on a trip to Colorado. I am sitting on my brother's balcony drinking a cup of coffee, gazing upon beautiful snow capped mountains in the distance. Instead of enjoying their beauty and anticipating my trek up those mountains for one last opportunity to ride their fluffy white powder before it all melts away, my mind is somewhere else. Instead of relishing this moment of serenity, I am too busy worrying that it is now April 4th and I have yet to post my blog's monthly progress report for March. What the heck is wrong with me?! Does anyone really care? This moment of reflection has helped me to realize why I started blogging in the first place. It was not to do Monthly Progress Reports or Weekly Buzzes. It was because I felt passionate about something. Passionate enough to take the time and energy to expresses my thoughts, feelings, and emotions for the world to read. This is why I started blogging.

Don't worry, I will still get around to my Monthly Progress Report (just as soon as I come up with another ridiculous title...he he). After all, March was a very exciting month for me and I am eager to share some of the things I learned. Likewise, the Weekly Buzz response has been tremendous. I take great joy in helping out other bloggers and I think they have really appreciated the extra "buzz". But it is posts like this that have gotten the best reaction on my blog. I can actually spot the good posts sticking up out of my Google Analytics like the Rocky Mountains that are before my very eyes. They were the ones that I was passionate about. The posts where I took the time to carefully craft every word to describe my thoughts and feelings are the ones that saw the most visitors, got the most comments, and earned the most compliments.

So why do you blog? Is it just to make money? Is it because you are bored at work? Or is it because you get exhilarated when something you are passionate about connects with other people? You can spend week after week surfing blog after blog for tips on how to grow your traffic. But I will tell you right now that nothing you do will have a greater impact on your success than writing with your heart. Stop worrying about the latest gimmick to generate traffic and focus on what you are offering your visitors. Give them a reason to come back. Sure, it might take a little while longer for your blog to be discovered. But I would much rather have a slow and steady increase of faithful followers over hoards of visitors who quickly leave and never come back. Write about something that is important to you. There are millions of people out there who probably feel the same way. If you stick with it long enough, they will find you. I promise.

Ah....that was refreshing. Thank you Rocky Mountains for your inspiration. Now its time to grab my snowboard. See you guys next week.

Jeff

* Image Courtesy of StevenM_61