I wouldn’t call myself a blogger by any means, but I’ve had the privilege of working alongside many successful ones.

Own and build your own platform(s). Things like Facebook and Twitter are useful social outposts to connect and gather like-minded people, but can change without warning (and often do) leaving you with lots of wasted time, energy, and money.

Put more effort into the few things you can control: a site on your own domain that you can customize and fill with awesome content and usefulness, an email list so you can speak directly with people (no spamming), and a good (brand) name that will stick in people’s memory so they can find you over and over and over and over (and over).

I think we can simply add a URL to a Flickr photo (and others, I’ll check) and it will show up here. Let’s try: