In over a year since I have been blogging, I have come across some awesome people. When I didn’t know much about blogging, I still was able to meet some great people along the way to help, inspire and teach me what it means to network. Each week I want to feature men and women in the Blogger Spotlight that has inspired, taught and supported both myself and other bloggers. Introduce Yourself to Mitch :  Please comment, visit “Mitch” and keep the support flowing to every blogger you know!

Please introduce yourself and tell us about your blog?

My name is Mitch Mitchell, and I actually have 5 blogs.  The one we’re talking about today is called,” I’m Just Sharing“, and I started that one about 4 1/2 years ago.  I started it mainly so I could talk about anything I wanted to and I’d thought about going anonymous, but decided that’s not what I’m about.  I still talk about whatever I want to talk about, but it’s morphed into more of a blog on blogging, social media commentary and writing.

What most influenced you to launch your business?

That’s a different question.  I’m an independent consultant and have been for 11 years.  A few years in I read about blogging, thought it would be a good vehicle to help promote myself in some way, and created my first business blog in 2005.

What is the biggest challenge you have faced so far with your blogs?

Trying to find the balance between saying too much and saying enough.  In other words, for true business blogging the idea is to show your expertise without giving everything away so people will come to you to work with them.  I tend to give it all away, tell everything I know about everything and how to do it in my blog posts, which means all anyone really has to do is read my blogs and they’ll get it all.

What role do social media play in your blogging life?

As a brief point of clarification, blogging is a part of social media and probably the biggest part.  The reason I say that is because if you follow anyone on Twitter you’ll notice the two biggest things people share are links to news stories and links to blogs.  By being connected in those other social media areas, it gives me many options for getting my blogs seen by more people.

How has blogging affected your career?

I actually feel like blogging has made me a better teacher and trainer, something I do in my consulting business.  Online, I’ve found that most people who write tutorials or try to help are incomplete in what they write because they assume everyone else knows what they’re talking about so they skip stuff.  Because of that whenever I write a tutorial blog post, I mention every single thing, every single step.  I now do that in consulting because just like online stuff, I’ve learned that just because people are in a certain field they really don’t know everything about it.

What advice would you give to aspiring bloggers?

If you absolutely hate writing don’t even start because nothing looks worse than a blog with no posts or no new content after awhile.  If you still want to do it pace yourself early on until you get used to it.  If you write in a niche, don’t confine yourself too much because you’ll run out of things to say pretty quickly.  And by all means, respond to comments you get on your blog, but learn what’s spam and what isn’t and learn it quickly; if a comment doesn’t reference anything specific in your blog post, treat it like spam and just delete it.

What aspect of social media has helped your business?

Blogging has helped more than anything else.  People aren’t clamoring for me unfortunately, but I have gotten speaking engagements and some writing contracts here and there.  Also, on one of my blogs I have people asking if they can advertise on it, which is generating a little bit of income that’s not so bad, though not enough to live on.  But anytime you can make extra money doing something you like doing is a good thing.

What would you say is the single biggest reason for your success?

I’d love to say it’s my writing proficiency, as I’ve written about 2,800 blog posts for myself and others over the years, but it turns out the biggest reason is because I not only respond to comments on my blogs but I visit a lot of other blogs and comment there as well. This is the part most new bloggers don’t get, that just because you write a blog doesn’t mean people will find it. The best advertising tool for your own blog is commenting on other blogs, making sure it’s as good a comment as you can write, being honest (if you agree, do so, but if you don’t, say that as well and explain why) and being as nice as you can be. If you could step back in time to when you were just starting out, what advice would you give yourself knowing what you know now? I made two mistakes with two different blogs.  With my business blog, which I started in 2005 (Mitchblog, called Mitch’s Blog), I didn’t understand either that one had to write with some kind of frequency or that a blog post was more than a paragraph here and there. With my I’m Just Sharing blog, though I said I wanted to write about anything, when I started out I was mainly writing posts to try to sell stuff without really offering people anything to think about or comment on, and pretty much wasted the first six months of my blog’s existence.  I would change both of those things and then both blogs would probably be performing much better.

Do you have any big projects in the works?

The biggest projects I have going right now are books I’m working on.  One is a compilation of newsletters and blog posts from the earlier days of my business on leadership and management.  The other, which is way down the line, is a book of relationship stories, not mine but fictional, that will try to highlight behavior that people should try not to exhibit to keep themselves out of trouble; that should prove to be interesting. Lol  I’m working on some speaking opportunities, including doing a local seminar on leadership and a social media subject.

What websites to you visit most?

I spend the majority of my time on Facebook, Google Plus, CNN and my own blogs.  I’m on Twitter often as well, but I use an offline program for that so I’m not actually visiting the website.

What is the best way for our readers to learn more about you or contact you for more information?

It depends what people might be interested in. One of the best strategies for anyone, if you have multiple sites, is to have multiple ways to not only be contacted, but to tell people something about yourself. As it pertains to me you can find out the most by visiting the biography link on my main business page.  I also have an About page and contact page on every one of my websites and blogs, which means that for I’m Just Sharing you can learn about me on my About page, and can go to my Contact page to write me from there.

My other blogs are:

• Top Finance Blog
• SEOX Blog
• Syracuse Wiki

Thanks for the opportunity to play with you today.   : – ) Thank you Mitch for being apart of this series!