I just read an interesting article on John Paul Aguiar blog where he asked 8 well-known and successful bloggers what one thing bloggers need to do today to succeed that they didn’t have to do in the past. It is interesting read, as are all his articles, and it got me thinking about what it takes to succeed, not just today, but tomorrow as well.
There are many ideas, and theories, about what it takes to succeed online. Some of those ideas are well-founded, while others are guesswork at best. While I haven’t realized the success as the bloggers in John Paul’s article have achieved, I still have learned a lot in my almost 4 years of blogging. One thing, however, has stood out above all other ideas with regards to success online: adaptation.
As Humans, We Have Learned to Adapt
Before I go on, let me just say this – “I am a creature of habit.” I don’t know why, but if given the choice I would do the same thing on a daily basis – which I do to some degree. It must be a comfort-thing.
Throughout history, we have seen that we a species have learned to adapt to our surroundings. We have survived in the almost every known part of this world, with the exception of living under water. We have even lived outside of this world. We have learned to adapt to our environment and to use technology to help us adapt.
The online world is not much different. To survive you must learn to adapt, and use technology to help you succeed. The online world is always changing, and unless you learn to change with it, you will be left behind, and someone else is more than willing to take your place.
Evolving with the Internet
When I started blogging almost 4 years ago, Facebook was in its infancy stage, and mostly confined to personal usage. Twitter had just started, and the purpose of writing 140 character messages didn’t appeal to many people.
In the past 4 years both sites have exploded in popularity – probably more than any other web site in the history of the world wide web. “Social networking”, and “social media” became the latest buzz words online, and it seems that to succeed you must adapt your interactions to make use of social networks.
The Internet has evolved rapidly since the days of BBS’s, chat rooms, e-mail, and instant messages. We are more engaged online, and are able to share a lot more with the use of social networks. We can interact in ways that we never thought possible ten years ago. How many would have thought about the ease of creating and sharing videos online ten years ago, or digital photos for that matter?
Adapting to the latest method of information sharing and interaction is crucial to being successful, whether you are a large corporation, or the owner of a blog. Understanding what avenues are available to you to, and what is being developed, is important for success.
Adapting to Rule Changes
If you want to get visitors to your web site, it is important to get other sites to link back to your web site. Obviously, writing great content is key, but others have found different ways to get the backlinks – some ways not always recommended.
A popular method of generating backlinks was to write, and publish, articles online to the various article hubs. You would simply write an article, and include a link to your web site in the author bio section. Besides the time and effort in writing the article, it wasn’t difficult to generate the backlinks.
With regards to content, many people were simply publishing articles from these article hubs onto their own site, which was allowed, but the articles were not original, unique content. Traffic was flowing to such sites because they would rank well in search engines.
Then this past year Google released their famous Farmer/Panda update that pretty much dropped many of the article hubs, as well as those that published duplicate articles, from the search results. While I’m not sure how this affected the backlink value, the sites that had the copied articles saw their traffic drop – some even considerably.
The rules of the search rankings had changed. It happens from time to time. In such situations the owner of sites that were dropped needed to evaluate their own site and understand why their rankings dropped. The would need to adapt to the changes made by Google, and other search engines, to find other ways of ranking well for their content. Copied content wasn’t going to work anymore.
Adaptation is very important for success online. While how you measure success will be different than how I measure my success, staying “status quo” will mean you will be left behind. It can be tough to succeed online if you are a “creature of habit.”
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on April 20, 2011 at 7:15 pm
Hi Paul – You make some very good points. I guess you could say that my experience with the Internet really began in 2000 when I started developing websites. Back then, I really wasn’t using search engines – other than MSN, maybe? or Netscape? But not like crazy, like we are now. Back then, you didn’t have well-known marketers teaching the virtues of blogging and content marketing.
I think your point an adaptation is right on, and I would also add this: Remember that *people* don’t change all that much. We all still have basic needs and we buy things using basic instinct. We are sensory. I consider most of what people talk about all the time mere tools. They are simply tools and they change, but the purpose for them doesn’t change. The key is to not get so caught up in the tool that we lose sight of what the tool is used for.
Hope that makes sense!
Cheers,
Tia
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on April 21, 2011 at 8:11 am
I agree with the fact that people don’t change all that much. The tools may change, but the purpose may stay the same. The tools may change to allow us to work more efficiently, or fix issues with the past tools. The basic principles of the tools will always remain the same, regardless of how they evolve.
on April 21, 2011 at 8:40 am
Paul.. TY for including my post here.. I Appreciate that man.
You are right.. you either adapt of disappear. This really applies to everything in life.
When it comes to online, things change so fast.. what works today may not work in 3 mnths.
Look at the Google change.. from one day to the next. article marketing went from being a great way to market your blog and get nice backlinks.. to being something you really shouldn’t do unless you have the time to write fresh clean articles each time.. and who has the time to do that 5-10 times a week?
Google’s change also screwed all your link building tricks.. what worked great before.. isn’t good enough now.
So adapting is the inly way to continue to grow your blog and succeed.
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on April 21, 2011 at 2:41 pm
No problem. Your post gave me the idea of this one.
Adapting is key, especially when it comes to search engines. With Google changing its algorithm once in a while, the techniques that once worked for ranking well, may not work anymore. You must be able to change the way you get traffic to continue to get visitors. Social network is changing that landscape even further.
on April 21, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Hi Paul, I like the way you have mentioned tips to adapt to changes. Since evolution man has adapted himself with time and today is the most intelligent mammal. I think the same theory applies to all of us bloggers. We have to adapt ourself in our way of blogging, using social and marketing tools to be up to date and recognized in the blogging world.
3 years back I used to think that 140 characters on Twitter is not enough to say something. But today it is a popular social tool and people are making money from it too. Short is sweet and today every blogger tweets and retweets everyday.
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on April 21, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Social media, especially Twitter, have changed the way we market our sites and ourselves. No one ten years ago would have thought 140 characters would be enough, but technology and site owners have adapted to that change. They now make 140 characters work for them.
on April 21, 2011 at 7:27 pm
You are right Paul. Adapting is what separates those that make money and those that fall behind. I’ve only been part of the online money making industry for a couple years now and I’ve seen many things change dramatically Over these 2 years I’ve had to alter my SEO and marketing methods in various ways to keep up with all the changes. I’ve seen many co-bloggers losing a lot of money because they are still doing the same things they did a while back. If you want to stay “in the game” you have to adapt.
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on April 22, 2011 at 11:37 am
Being stagnant online is a recipe for disaster, as you have seen with other bloggers. I’m not doing the same thing I was doing last year even.
on July 2, 2011 at 6:44 pm
Its really amazing how fast the blogging world has revolutioned into.There is so much that we constantly have to adapt and make changes to so that we keep up.It is however interesting when new programs ease our online activity but we have to be willing to constantly adapt to this changes
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on July 4, 2011 at 8:44 am
Blogging has definitely changed, and is continually changing. It is very important to adapt to the constantly changing world of blogging or you could be left behind.
on September 2, 2011 at 7:36 am
I am planning to have my own online business soon, I really want to thank you for sharing this, for me to monitor what will happen to my plans, adaptation is perfect for me to become successful.
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on September 20, 2011 at 11:39 pm
Yes, you’re right. Adaptation is surely a good thing to be done if you can. It’s a must i guess.
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