I see a lot of people who are fucking sick of advice.
On the one hand you have a handful of people who love to share blogging tips. They say, “Do x to achieve y!” These people are typically just trying to help. They want to share their own experiences and guide you towards achieving their same result.
On the other hand we have people who despise this idea of “blogging tips” or handing out advice. They say, “Stop telling me how to blog! Let me do whatever the hell I want.”
Woah! Dilemma! What do we do about this?
If you want to achieve a specific result, there often are objective steps you can follow to get there.
For example, if you want to grow your traffic then writing quality content will usually help you do that. Getting on Pinterest will help you do that.
Do you have to do those things? No. Of course not. If you hate Pinterest then no one is going to make you get on there. Those things will help you grow your blog, but that doesn’t mean you HAVE to take those steps. Heck, maybe you’re not even interested in growing your blog.
Not all advice will be relevant to YOU.
Everyone has different goals. A lot of people do want to grow their blogs, but some aren’t interested. They don’t care about growth, page views, or subscribers. They just want to post about whatever they damn please. If that’s the case, then the advice doesn’t apply to them.
That’s where the distinction comes in.
It’s up to YOU to follow advice… or not.
Posting advice isn’t a bad thing in itself. I mean, c’mon, people are just trying to be helpful.
The best way for you to handle this is to read the advice (if you want), absorb it, and decide whether or not it applies to you. The power is 100% with you.
You might choose not to follow advice if:
- It doesn’t apply to you because you’re not aiming for that end result.
- It doesn’t quite feel right.
- It’s wrong (yes, sometimes advice is just blatantly wrong).
Let’s not jump down peoples’ throats for offering advice. Just like you want to blog about whatever you want, so do they, which means they get to post blogging tips (woohoo!). And you get to sick back and decide whether or not to take that advice or put it straight in your “don’t give a shit” folder.
That means if you want to keep bitching about other people giving advice, you’re free to do that too. I won’t stop you. To hell with my advice about advice.
This is great advice Ashley. I know when I first started writing reviews, I wish I had seen how-to posts. Even now, I don’t see many advice posts about what people think they should see in a review. Once again, I don’t know that everything would apply to everyone, but there are always new people and I think it is great for seasoned people to help out the newcomers. Even as someone who has been reviewing for several years now, I still read these advice posts because someone might have a new idea that I like or remind me of something that I should be doing but have just let slip. I never take every piece of advice in the posts, but I might take a piece here and another from a different one and make my own style. Once again, great post!
I absolutely LOVE advice posts. They’re my absolute favourite. Even though I feel like a lot of them don’t apply to me, I still love reading them. I love seeing what other people are doing, what they suggest, and how it worked for them. Even if I don’t use a lot of the advice, I still like reading it!
I’m just tittering over your headline. 😉
Teehee. 🙂
Awesome post! 🙂
Thank you! 🙂
I think you’re very right that there’s an audience for blog advice, even if not *everyone* is into it. I put out a survey at the end of last year asking what kind of events our followers would like to see on the blog, and a “Blogging Tips” event was far in the lead. So I’m doing one in February. If people find it helpful, great. If not, they should just blog however makes them happy. In the end, it’s all just suggestions. I think very few people are trying to tell others how they “must” blog.
That’s fabulous Briana! I love reading blogging tips. Even if a lot of them don’t feel like they apply to me, I still love to read them. It’s interesting to see what other people recommend, what kind of results they get, or just what they’re doing. I think I’m just a nosey person. 😉
Haha. Exactly my thoughts. cannot take all the advice around.
I love reading blogging advice (and yours in particular). The difficulty for me is to choose which advice works for my blog. Fortunately as I get more blogging experience I’m starting to make more educate guesses. So, keep giving us cool blogging tips!
Lmao I loved that end sentence. But I agree with you, advice is there for those of us who want it or not, you get to decide what advice you want to follow or not. Personally, I love advice posts! I’m always ready to learn about something new. 🙂
When I first read through this post, I was confused. Who on earth gets mad at people for offering advice. However, I just read someone else’s post in the book community and apparently you can get mad about how-to posts. I guess I could see people getting mad if someone said it directly to them or stated that a certain way of blogging/reviewing is wrong/bad BUT why hate on all bloggers who give advice to their general audience? In my experience, most book blogger how-to posts include some type of disclaimer like “this is my opinion, do what works for you.” If people don’t like advice, then unfollow them. No one is forcing them to read those how-to posts. Stating that ““How to” book blogger posts are stupid” is hurtful because A LOT of people love those posts and write them. Some people like to follow a procedural way of doing things and some people like to do whatever the heck they want to do. Neither is wrong.
It’s just as hurtful to say “how to” book blogger posts are stupid as it is to say that a certain way of blogging is wrong in a how-to post. People can blog however they want to blog. Whether that’s being friends with authors, collecting ARCs, rating books, or making money from blogging(why so much hate on this when most other niches do this?). Follow who you want to follow and blog how you want to blog. If you don’t want other people to tell you how to blog, then don’t tell other people how they should blog! ARG!! Sorry I felt the need to rant about a certain post and didn’t want to do it on their blog… sorry lol. I’m not sure if this post was in response to that other post, but I love it anyways 🙂
I see a lot of people who look at advice as others telling you what you “need” to be doing. Then they run around saying, “OMG stop telling bloggers what to do! Let us do what we want!”
Even if someone says, “You need to be doing this” it can also usually be classified as “You should really do this if you want x to happen”, which objectively might be true. But again, that doesn’t mean you actually have to do it, particularly if you’re not interested in x (like more traffic, etc.).
i think this is great advice, ashley! (lmao) i’m not typically the one to follow advice, but i do find it incredible interesting to see people give advice. what i’ve noticed is that all the advice tends to have one or two similarities that are way overdone, and how much it gets repeated is really annoying.
as always, great post, ashley! 🙂
I love it when people try to help and sometimes I really find helpful information. At the same time, I feel some people take their advice a little TOO serious (like their way is the only way) and that’s also not the purpose of giving advice..
As long as you tell your ways just to show others (and give them perhaps some tips and tricks along the way) it is great. And if you don’t want to take that advice, because you’ve find your own way, that is also great.
Hi Ashley,
This is great! haha…I need a “don’t give a shit” folder in my Evernote…pronto!
You are so true that someone who is a blogger should first determine what THEY want from their blog, not what various gurus say they should do…or where they should be (just like your reference to Pinterest).
I’m one of those that provide advice. Whether people take or not is up to them. If they want to click on it or head to my website (full of tips and advice), it’s their choice. I’m simply sharing what I’ve learned with those that want to learn as well.
With that said, even I get sick of the same advice over and over from the blogging community. lol
– Jeff
I strongly agree with this post! I really don’t get the whole hate for advice posts, because in my opinion , they’re super helpful! There are a lot of newbie and even seasoned bloggers out there who appreciate blogging tips of any form! I love myself love advice posts. Even when a particular tip doesn’t work for me, I love seeing a new perspective or method! I really wish people stop whining about tips and trick posts.
Traffic Kills the Urge of a blogger