The Game of Chess
Modern Chess is one of the most popular indoor games for young and old minds alike. It has a lot to do with exercising your mind, concentrating; planning moves to out bid your opponents, amongst others. Though it looks simple enough to pass on, it has a long list of advantages for which it continues to remain the numero uno whiz kid game for ages.
How does it related to blogging? And why should you care to read? Let’s begin asking yourself, why do you blog? The reasons may differ vastly from taking blogging as a free time activity to getting rich quickly, and each and every one of them is fair enough. Now try to answer what you want from your blog? Most of the answers will revolve around getting recognition, having vast user base (loyal readers), generate money etc.
If you look your Online Blogging Arena as a chess game, where you have to outbid your opponent for the most sought after blogging destination, it helps derive some general tips from the game of chess. As the saying goes, “Competition exists on in the minds of participants, what we see in real life is just a reflection of it.”
Creative Imagination
Chess involves a lot of creative imagination. You have a small army assigned to you and have to defeat an equally small army of opponent. Now you can go for all out attack or opt for wait and watch approach. You can either lay bait to take down one opponent piece at a time or sacrifice couple of yours to win. Some of your moves would be expected by opponent, and some of it will surprise him.
The same can be done with your Blog. Bring creativity to it. Try a different design. Think of a different Topic. Bring something unique. Why should a reader pick our blog to read among thousand others? Answer to this question alone can make your blog successful. You blog would be self marketing itself.
Best creative idea I found was that of Alex Tew from England , owner of Million Dollar Homepage. Look at the beauty of it. That guy made a million bucks just by capitalizing on the idea of renting a pixel on a 1000 x 1000 grid homepage for advertising for a dollar. At the end of it, he had 1000 x 1000 = 1,000,000 dollars in his pocket even before he stepped out from his college. Surprised… On top of it, he sold the last 1000 odd pixels of advertising by auctioning on ebay fetching a lot more than one dollar per pixel.
Systematic Thinking
In chess, you cannot roll a dice and work your piece according to the number luck throws at you. Every move you play has to be thought and evaluated. This process is continuous from the moment you decide to play to the moment you win or lose.
Your blog also need systematic thinking in order to survive from extinction. Decide a month’s content in advance (an exception would be blogs on news related topics). Make a decision on the frequency of post and stick to it.
Think what is lacking the most, is it the content focus, quality of material, interest of the topic or something else. May be you are putting all your efforts into publishing and none for advertising the blog. Once decided, develop a systematic and realistic plan to achieve the goal.
Decision Making Ability
In chess, you start deciding your future moves even before the first piece moves on the board. You know where you want your pieces exactly and then try achieving that position one step at a time. You can even sacrifice your queen just to get your pawn in the required position.
What it means is that, you have to put your thinking cap on every time you decide anything related to your blog. It can be as simple as adding a widget to your blog or as complex as changing your blog’s theme. Whatever it may be, you have to do a small analysis of the situation and decide if the move is right.
For example: Chances of gaining a higher search engine rank are more if your Site’s keywords are found more often in your Site’s content. Now you have to decide the amount of keywords to infuse so that a fine balance is maintained between your site’s content and your search engine optimization.
Evaluation of Situation
One of the loveliest aspects of a chess game is its ability to let you evaluate different situation. One who evaluates correctly and decide his steps accordingly goes ahead to win the game.
This aspect is very important to all Bloggers. As a newbie, before jumping blindly with your blog, you should evaluate if that particular area of market is saturated or not. Entering into a saturated market is will need a radically different approach to come on top. Also to consider would be entry barriers and technical expertise for that particular area.
For Example : I like stars and astronomical phenomenon very much, but don’t blog about it because I don’t have the expertise for it.
As far as the pro bloggers are concern, they should remember that evaluation should be an ongoing activity. After certain period of time, a blogger should have to evaluate his progress. Does a change in approach needed? How is the competition doing? etc.
Concentrated and Lasting Effort
Often in a chess game, you tend to repeat same pattern of steps to gain a particular square / position. That position may be extremely useful for you strategically for winning the game. So you keep all your attentions towards gaining that piece in that particular position, without letting your opponent know about your intentions. I have often been involve in chess game lasting more than a hour, when finally one opponent gave up his concentration and lost the game eventually.
Similarly, when you aim at a particular blog, you have to put a lasting effort towards achieving the target. Say you want a photo blog showcasing your ability with camera, for that you need to have a wide array of clicked photos available with you. Incase you don’t have, the best option is to drop the idea or pick up the camera and start clicking some pictures.
This concludes part one of the two part series. Click here for part two where we discuss some of the famous strategies used in chess and how you can benefit from them.
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