How to win at blogging, when you don’t care about winning

Nick Saban is my hero.

He’s my hero for the same reason that he may be your most despised enemy: He coaches the top college football team in America, Alabama. He has won two of the last three national championships with the Crimson Tide (and three of the last nine including one at LSU).

But this is not about Nick Saban, the football coach. This is about Nick Saban, the guy stuck in a rut.

A lot of people wish they were stuck in Saban’s rut (not dirty!). He has a system for winning in which victory is almost an accidental byproduct, a zenlike state of dominating other teams on the field.

He calls it … the Process.

The Process is not unlike how I’ve had great success at blogging, and you can, too.

Saban emphasizes focus on knowing your role and practicing the skills vital to your role. It is a micro-focus rather than a macro-focus.

What’s somewhat incongruent for me is a lack of goals. His goal is to have everyone know their role and perform it with precision and consistency. I like long-term goals to help determine timelines and strategy.

But, you can succeed in blogging, even without a goal.

My Process for blogging is straightforward and seemingly easy to duplicate. (Hmm, should this be a 31-day series?)

• Have a great platform. Nothing holds you back like unease with trying to post or a bug-filled system. I rely on WordPress to do its job smoothly so I can do mine.
• Have something great to say. Whether it’s informative, interesting or entertaining, I can rely on either an editorial calendar or an idea list to share ideas on the best topics. This includes my newsletter and my social channels, too.
• Share your posts consistently. No automation here. I always work hard to share my latest work (and my archived posts, too!) with my friends, via email, social media, business card and in person.
• Engage everyone. Using my digital listening skills, I watch reaction to my posts. This includes comments on the post, links and trackbacks and social media mentions. I work hard to talk with people and follow up on their questions.
• Measure everything. Tracking your traffic and other statistics can keep you on track to improve with each step.

Saban believes the Process creates its own successes through excellence in execution. It’s about winning the down, the drive, the quarter, the half, the game and repeat. Take care of those things, and a championship can happen.

So if you copy my Process, focus on the next topic, the next post, the next photo, the next series, the next email newsletter. Consistency and high quality can reap rewards such as more comments, more traffic, more clicks, more subscribers, more leads, more sales and more opportunities.

Recruit well for your blogging team, give them the tools and training they need to fulfill their roles. Even if you don’t care about winning, you’ll earn victory through greatness.

Even without a goal. Even without Nick Saban.

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Additional reading:

• Nick Saban’s Process, with lessons on leadership and success
• Posts on blogging

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Want to put the Process in place?
Recruit me today to help your team become No. 1.