Pro Blogger Interviews

You might think that, with blogging being a digital pursuit, the bloggers we interviewed for Blog Wise would be right up with the latest and greatest productivity gadgets, philosophies, and software. They’re not. Interestingly, almost every one of the bloggers we spoke with relies on physical productivity tools to some degree—pen and paper, wall calendars, and whiteboards.

“Have you ever merged together four different companies with four different partners, and employees from one company and another company?” asks Brian Clark of Copyblogger.net. “Oh my goodness, it was quite stressful.” But, he adds, now that the transition’s complete, “It’s amazing to me, what we can do.” All of the bloggers we spoke to as we researched Blog Wise extolled the virtues of team work—even when the team is your readership, as in the case of solo blogger Leo Babauta’s collaborative writing

Given their productivity levels, you might think that A-list bloggers don’t get distracted. The truth, as the interviews in Blog Wise show, is that they’ve learned to deal with distractions so that they don’t rule the day. Is social media sucking up your time? Give yourself permission to spend a few minutes there, says Amy Porterfield.

All the bloggers we spoke to as we researched Blog Wise had an opinion on structure. Even those, like Matt Kepnes of NomadicMatt.com, who doesn’t blog to regular schedules, noted that they had particular times that were good for certain work tasks, and particular times that tended to be less productive.

Given all the tasks that can crop up on a blogger’s to do list, it’s no surprise that many of us struggle with task planning and control. Even the big-name bloggers we interviewed for Blog Wise grappled with these issues. Having realized the negative impacts of stress on her productivity, Amy Porterfield has adopted a range of tools—from physical calendars to Google Docs—that help smooth her daily workload, and make sure she gets everything done.

Every blogger has different motivations, but the interviews we completed as we developed Blog Wise showed how important it is to know what your motivations actually are. The bloggers we spoke to listed a range of motivations. The first was community and audience. Darren told us he’s motivated when he sees the community here at ProBlogger getting energy from his ideas. He’s motivated even further when he gets energy back from you guys.

Over the coming days, we’ll be presenting a series of pro blogging productivity tips that we’ve compiled using the advice of nine A-list bloggers we interviewed for Blog Wise, our new ebook on blogging productively. Today, let’s consider the question, “do you have a productivity problem?” In the blogosphere, it’s pretty easy to compare your blog to others, and feel like you’re not doing enough.

Do you want to tap into the audience of over 1 billion people using Facebook? This Wednesday I will be hosting a free live webinar with someone who has taught me so much about Facebook Marketing – Amy Porterfield. At a recent session at Blog World Expo that Amy was teaching at I came away with a long page of action items of things to implement on my own Facebook pages and I’m confident that in our webinar you’ll likewise come away with some great ideas and things to do.

With the launch this week of Seth Godin’s latest book, We Are All Weird, we wanted to share this interview we recently conducted with Seth on productivity and blogging.