Get a firm grasp on your blog’s true potential by revisiting your current situation

In my day job, I serve as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for a small government consulting firm. I ascended to this role after years of working for large Systems Integrators in the trenches, delivering innovative technical solutions for government clients.

Yeah, I call them innovative, because they were! These weren’t boring accounting applications or time card systems. Not that there’s anything wrong with those. Anyway…

I started out as a lowly developer coding away into the wee hours of the night (damn, I miss those days – where’s my compiler!)

I then worked my way up to Senior Developer and then into the Solutions Architect role. Serving in this role allowed me to understand enterprise systems and how each component works and interfaces with each other to complete particular tasks. As my leadership role expanded in the company I started to get more engaged with proposals and winning new business.

My role was typically grounded in the technical volume of the proposal – just where I wanted it. I didn’t want anything to do with the management portion. In fact, for years, I kept Microsoft Project off my laptop (damn proud of that accomplishment). Over the years my team won quite a bit of business and we lost a few along the way too.

A strategy that works

One strategy I liked to use allowed us to accomplish two key goals – to better understand the current system environment and to craft an end-state vision for what was possible. This was especially effective on those projects that we won and had to deliver. Not only did it serve as material for the proposal but it also served as a guide for implementation when the time came.

This same exact concept absolutely applies to your online platform and blog. So, I want to share this strategy with you so you can use it to help grow your blog. And to understand what the hell is going on in your day-to-day operations.

That strategy is a concept I like to call Blueprinting.

When I blueprint systems there are typically two objectives I want to fulfill. Figure out what it looks like now (the current state or as-is) and what it’s going to look like after we work our magic on it (the future state, end-state, or to-be).

How to apply the strategy to your blogging empire

Too many people get wrapped up in their vision of the end state and completely neglect the task of taking stock of their current situation.

As Confuscious said, “Study the past if you would define the future.”

This same issue holds true for bloggers. You are constantly trying to expand your online platform and as a result you end up losing track of all the plates you have spinning.

Or, you continue to wire up systems and processes to “make it work” only to completely forget how you did something or how it’s working. Unfortunately, when dealing with the latter, it’s usually under the stress of trying to get it to work again.

Your best strategy and hope for survival with your blogging is to do your own version of blueprinting.

Know where you are now

Document your entire online platform and truly understand how all of the various components interconnect and communicate.

This will help you establish your baseline environment and may actually surprise you with how far your web of trinkets expands. I know it woke my ass up when I saw touch points out on Triberr and even Technorati. Areas of my platform that are wayyyy off my tactical radar yet linked to my overall system.

So you can better know where you are going

Once you have your current environment mapped, you can then start to identify what’s working and what isn’t. You can then walk through and document which systems can stay and which can go. You also have the ability to identify particular components that need more work, or need to be fully documented because you really have no idea how they might actually be working…or if they are working.

Documenting the to-be environment allows you to then work on honing the vision for your online brand and business and should set you on a path for growth in the right areas.

Your action plan

If you really want to know where you’re going, you have to understand where you’ve been and where you are currently.

In my Ready to Blog course, we do a deep dive into your environment to really identify those lost outposts of your online platform and to help you refine and clarify your overall strategy.

If you want to partake in the upcoming release of the course, sign up TODAY.