Bloggers Going It Alone as Opposed to Working as a Team

Working through the many projects I have done over the years, I have learned that there are two approaches you can take. One approach would be to go it alone and the other approach would involve working with others in order to complete the project. There are obviously advantages to each approach.

Probably the best benefit of going it alone in a project is that you have complete control over every aspect of it. You make all of the decisions, there is nobody there to argue with it or no creative differences of any kind. There may be other issues that will come into play like your budget. Perhaps you simply do not have the budget that would allow you to hire on others or to entice anyone to participate.

I know a lot of people who basically have been going it alone. Some of them, it seems to work for, while others don't seem to make much progress at all, regardless as to how many years they have been at it. If it seems that you are not making progress after going it alone for a long time, it may be time to consider trying to put together a team.

Sometimes you may be able to assemble a group of people without having to shell out a lot of money. Allow me to provide an example. Let's say that you are a blog writer. I know from experience that you can write blogs for a very long time and build a readership base at a very slow pace. Most bloggers I know of basically go it all alone. They write their own blog and do their own website with their blog on it. They often struggle to build a following or acquire a great number of subscribers.

The problem is that many bloggers don't work together to help promote one another. It's not really about being competitive, it has more to do with the fact that each person gets so caught up in what they are doing that they often neglect to look at the big picture. To me, the big picture is not the work itself but building up a following so people can see your work.

Now let's say that you have been writing a blog for a number of years and have not been building that following. Well, you may be doing something wrong that has nothing at all to do with the quality of your work. It may have much more to do with your approach to promoting yourself.

So let's also say that you now want to change your approach since it has not been working out so well for you. Let's say that you find a few other bloggers and decide to start your own website that will post the work of a number of bloggers. Each blogger promotes the site in the hopes that they could all share each others' readers. So how would this work any better than going it alone? I am glad that you asked. Allow me to elaborate on that:

First of all, people will generally care more about something that they are involved in rather than something that they are not involved in. It is basic human nature. So when it comes to promoting something, they are more likely to promote, mention or bring attention to something they are involved in.

So if you have a group of ten bloggers promoting a website, you should be able to pull in a significant amount of traffic to the site. Then you could hope that over time, the traffic will grow and your readership base for your blog will grow significantly as well.

Then there is the social networking aspect of it all. Let's say that your website has a Facebook group. If each contributing writer participates in the group by posting and commenting, while inviting their Facebook friends, they should be able to generate a lot of activity as well as interest in the Facebook group. That could help to generate more interest in the website as well.

Much of the success would obviously depend upon the level of participation of the group of writers. If each member of the group really does his or her share of the writing, promotion and participation on the social networking sites, success for each member becomes more likely. So obviously it is important to make sure that you assemble a group of quality writers who work not only hard on their writing but their self promotion as well. If everyone works hard and together, it should turn out much better than going it alone.

Bob Craypoe is a musician, writer, cartoonist, webmaster, 3D artist and entrepreneur. He is also the creator of the Punksters.net Online Comic Strip. Just Google his name and you will find him.