Opportunities are built on discipline.

Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod

Each morning I wake up to a fresh new blog post from Chris Brogan.

You want to talk about discipline? Chris has discipline.

If you have a blog or have ever had a blog you probably know how difficult it is to find the time – let alone the ideas – to write a new blog post every single day.

A friend of mine said something to me last night that really made me think about discipline and how I seriously need to have more of it, so Chris’s blog post, Discipline and the Blogger’s Opportunity, couldn’t have arrived at a better time for me.

Chris writes about the fact that every blog post is an opportunity. “Every time you post, you build an opportunity. It might be for making business. It might be for sharing thought leadership. It might be the chance to build some new relationships. Mechanically, it might just be another attempt to gain better organic ranking from Google. But each post is an opportunity.”

He goes on to provide several important points to consider before writing a blog post:

Show up – First, just be there. By writing a blog post on a regular schedule, your audience knows to expect you. They come to accept the flow of your efforts. Farmers have this relationship with their systems. It shows stewardship.

Deliver value – Bring your best game as often as possible. We all have “barely functional” days, but more often than not, if we’re earning people’s respect, our efforts must be something of value to our reader. Writing about ourselves doesn’t cut it.

Improve – Your great post from a week ago doesn’t give you a hall pass. Learn from those posts that don’t hit. Experiment. Read other great writers in your vertical and outside of it. Deconstruct what they’re doing and try to improve your game.

Clarify your desire – If you’re seeking a specific result from a post, guide your audience to that result. If you’re seeking sales, make the call to action obvious. If you’re looking for comments, invite a dialogue at the end of your post. It’s yours to win.

Do your part – Blogging isn’t all about your blog. Have you commented lately on others’ blogs? Are you sharing using the various social sharing tools? Be a good neighbor and help other bloggers by sharing, commenting, and adding value to the ecosystem.

As I read these points I couldn’t help but think that they can be applied to many areas of our lives…not just blogging.

Go back and read those points again, and this time think about them outside of the context of blogging. Think about them in terms of your work life; your personal life.

Isn’t it interesting that the things that make us successful at doing one thing can make us successful in so many ways?

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