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Do You Need A Certificate To Prove Your Blogging Worthiness?

30 Comments

Last week was the final meeting I had with University Hospital here in Syracuse. I was part of a diabetes study, the results of which I’ll hear about sometime in 2014. It was in its own way a 12-week study that lasted 12 months; figure that one out. lol

At the end of the meeting, the lady handed me an envelope, which contained the certificate you see to the right. She congratulated me for not only getting through the entire study but showing an improvement, and then maintaining most of the improvement. Everything stayed the same except my glucose readings; I have to work on bringing that down again unfortunately.

In my last post I talked about dealing with our irrelevance and how we’re not all that irrelevant when we think about it. And yet, sometimes we still feel that way in our lives, in our blogging, in our careers. Sometimes we feel that need for validation of some type from someone else; it doesn’t always feel like it’s enough when we validate ourselves.

What am I getting at? I’m going to ask 5 questions. If you can truthfully say that you are or have done these things, then I award you the certificate at the end of this post. All you have to do is print it out, put your name on the line, and put it… somewhere, anywhere. You can scan it and put it on your blog. You can put it on your wall or on your computer. You can copy it and just leave it on your computer; whatever you want to do. Or you can ignore it if you don’t feel you need it. Still, the questions, which are thus:

1. Do you see yourself as trying to contribute to the overall community in some fashion with your blog? In other words, are you writing your blog because you feel you have something to share, as opposed to only trying to make money from it? Nothing wrong with making money, but if those are your only motives then your reason isn’t pure; my rules today.

2. Do you get comments on your blog that you respond to? Even if you’ve written 100 posts and only have one comment, did you respond to that comment if you determined it wasn’t spam? Spam comments I understand; delete those things and move on. But if you got at least one good comment, did you respond? Do you try to respond to as many comments as possible, especially if the comment was a good one (heck, sometimes if you get a one line comment there’s nothing to respond to; I’ll give you that one).

3. Do you ever comment on other blogs? You might not understand what that really has to do with your own blog but you’re not really part of the community of bloggers if you’re willing to entertain guests who come to your blog without checking out what others have to say. Did you know that I did a little research project and proved that commenting on other blogs drives more traffic to your blog than anything else?

4. Do you promote your blog in other spaces? Blog commenting is only one way to promote your blog. You ever heard of social media? Have you heard of newsletters? Have you heard of linking to your blog via your email signature line? Often people say they don’t get many visitors on their blog, to which the question “what are you doing to promote your blog” always comes out.

5. Do you write your own content without plagiarizing, come up with topics that no one else may have written on, stay true to yourself no matter what you write about, give the best effort you can every time out (no one hits a home run every time), not fear controversy when it’s needed, and don’t believe the hype when someone tells you that you’re not good enough?

If so, then you deserve to be rewarded. I’m not giving you money (You buy my book? Of course you didn’t, so I don’t have money to throw around like that lol), but I will share the certificate you see below. As I said, it’s yours if you want it, but don’t lie to use it. Congratulations; you deserve it. 🙂


 

30 thoughts on “Do You Need A Certificate To Prove Your Blogging Worthiness?”

  1. Copying this certificate. I think most of us will reply to comments if they are genuine.I personally get a lot of spam comments, sometimes even link bots posts comments..Yes if there is a good comment, it is most certainly replied.

    1. Cool Joe. Actually, there’s lots of people who don’t reply to comments; I see it every day and its irksome when I’ve left a comment that I think is pretty good. Enjoy your certificate!

    1. Rummuser, I think you’re being really hard on yourself as regards #1. Of course you’re contributing to the overall blogging community; all the comments you get and your responses to them prove that.

  3. Excellent, excellent! Bravo, Mitch! This has all been said before in other places, but it’s always worth repeating especially when it’s said so well.

  4. I win!! 🙂

    Love it, Mitch – I thought this was going to be about some new Blogging Governance Council that was self-appointed to set criteria of blogging worthiness and certify bloggers, to which I was about to cry, “BLARGH on your BLOGGING CERTIFICATE!” 😉

  5. Mitch, this is an interesting perspective…a certificate for blogging worthiness. If you don’t mind, I’m going to borrow your idea for my upcoming workshops.

    To answer the question, I have earned a certificate for my blogging contributions for all of the above.

  6. Love it too Mitch 🙂 I hope I pass. This is one to pin! Not sure if I’m as good at promoting myself as others. I tend to get gun shy on that sometimes. Like I see many people re-tweeting great things others say about them. Is that promoting themselves or being too egotistical? I’m not sure where to draw the line.

    1. That’s not egotistical at all Lisa. Also, promoting your own post more than once in a day isn’t being egotistical. You also comment on other blogs, thus that helps advertise yourself, and I see you on G+ all the time. You qualify. 🙂

  7. Mitch, I am not perfect but I am doing the best that I can do right now. I am learning from you and other good examples out there. Every week, I am getting a little bit better. Can I come back in a few months and claim my certificate then?

  8. This whole concept of getting a blogging worthiness certificate sounds amazing to me. I write what my heart says, but I can’t deny the fact that blogging is the only source of income for me. The rest 4 questions are quite straightforward for me. After so much of analysis, I think I deserve this certificate. Thinking to copy and print it out and frame it. What’s your view on this? Thanks for an amazing idea, Mitch! Loved it.

  9. This looks really interesting. I think people who create really great blogs deserve a certificate. The questions could really help a blogger realize if they deserve something like this. What if only some of the questions are applicable? I think there’s still time for improvement, and maybe come back to check again the questions to see if already worthy of a certificate.

  10. Great article, Mitch! I love the certificate at the end.

    I think you really did a great job of relating what is truly important in our blogging activities. When we come from the right frame of mind, the rest of it naturally falls into place.

    Great read! I hope you have a great week!

    ~Barry

  11. Well, I really don’t know whether I should be honored with this blogging worthiness certificate or not. I have been practicing or you can say blogging since 4 years now along with my job. I agree that I don’t give so much time to my blog like other bloggers but whenever I do I give my 100%. I will definitely try to do on daily basis so that I can get this certificate for myself. Thanks Mitch for sharing this amazing idea.

    1. Lancia, it’s a bit of fun, so whether you’re honored or not depends on your own state of mind. In general, it’s a post about what I consider fairly good general blogging practices, and the idea that there are some people who aren’t sure what they are or where they stand.

  12. I think I’m eligible, little skeptical about the 1st point lol. I think most of us will reply to comments if they are genuine, I just go on interacting lol. I’m eligible to this certificate good post, thanks for sharing.

    1. No problem Ricky, but I’d say that I don’t think the majority get the concept of responding to comments at all, even people who’ve been blogging for over a year. If they don’t understand the belief of blogging community and all then they just write without thoughts of how to consistently get comments. You wouldn’t believe how many big name bloggers there are who won’t respond to a single comment, or maybe only respond to some of the day the post goes live then ignores you from that point on.

  13. Nice post, I think I’m eligible for this certificate. Relationship matters a lot in the Blogosphere, so interaction is very much necessary. I thoroughly love commenting but the sad part is there are many established Bloggers who don’t reply to the comments.

    1. That’s true Dyon, and I think that’s a major shame. Of course I understand “busy”, which may mean you don’t respond to everything at a certain point, but before then you respond to everything, and after that you at least respond to those comments that are intriguing, add to the conversation, and ask questions.

  14. Hey Mitch, another great post. I would say that you would find very few bloggers who do the five things you mentioned in this post, I mean honestly speaking, you may get people claiming to be honest without being one. Speaking about myself I do follow all the 5 things mentioned above, but I don’t need the certificate because I am satisfied with my inner peace. Thanks for sharing the post.

  15. I reckon I can answer yes to all those points when it comes to my WassupBlog. I know a lot of the big boys in blogging that would fail in at least one of them, you know which one too.

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