What I Learned My First Two Months of Blogging

• Content Promotion: Promoting your content is often much harder and more time consuming than coming up with or writing the content. You can blow up Facebook and Twitter all day announcing your newest, most epic post, but unless you have followers and those followers share, you’ll stalemate and that’s frustrating. Since most of us don’t have tons of followers early on, and the friends and family we do have following are there to read, (sorry to say but they suck at promoting in a lot of cases) you will need help! This is where the interaction with other bloggers that I mention later on is so important.

 

• Keep On Keeping On: It’s easy to become frustrated and sometimes difficult to stay motivated. Remember that stalemate I mentioned, it sucks because you probably entered the blogging realm like I did, excited, optimistic, and ready to share what you have to say with the world. Except the world isn’t paying attention in the beginning and it’s up to you to get their attention. Some days you have a “why did I bother” attitude, but you have to get over it and keep working at it. I haven’t heard of many successful blog stories that occurred in the first few months of taking the leap. Keep working at it, you will make progress.

 

• Schedules: Time Management is essential. This goes back to one of my very first posts 5 Ways to Stay Organized in the Midst of Chaos. Chances are there’s more on your calendar than blogging so making sure to allocate adequate time to all of your obligations is important. Use  the zillions of organization and time management tools that are out there to help. If you don’t you’ll forever be running around putting out fires rather than being pro-active and ahead of the game.

 

• Notes, Notes, Notes: Write ideas down when you get them instead of hoping you remember them later. I can’t stress the importance of this enough. Use notes on your cell phone, jot it on a receipt, or send yourself an e-mail. Do whatever you need to do to retrieve the information later because chances are when you finally get an opportunity to sit down and work on the idea, or research more information, you won’t remember what it was. Don’t let a great opportunity or epic post get away from you because you can’t remember what it was even about.

• Pace Yourself: Don’t try to be an overachiever, you’ll burn yourself out. For me, blogging isn’t the only thing I have going on in life so setting a schedule to post every day was setting myself up for failure. I know this because I tried to do it for the first couple of weeks. I’ve since realized that my life simply does not allow for that and that’s okay. It’s better to realize it now than get readers accustomed to daily content and then not be able to keep up. I’ve now set a schedule for posting three times a week, if I can add more than that great, if not, I’m doing my three minimum and that is an achievable number for me. Your number may be different, more or less, but do what is comfortable for you.

 

• Engage: Interact with other bloggers and take time to read and comment on other blogs. (Remember that help with content promotion I mentioned?) Interacting with other bloggers is a great tool for that and it gives you ideas on changes that you may want to make to your blog or to the way you blog. Linky parties and blog hops are your friend and an awesome way to get your content out there and increase your following as long as you actively participate and don’t just wait for people to come to you.

 

• Don’t Overlook Inspiration – It’s There: New content inspiration is everywhere, you just have to keep your eyes open for it. A great example of this is a couple weeks ago I was looking online for ways to get tree sap out of my husband’s favorite pants. I found a tip that mentioned hand sanitizer and I tried it and it worked. I wrote that in my post ideas notes because it could be useful to someone else too. Did you over extend yourself by volunteering to bake dozens of cookies for the school Halloween party? I did and guess what? Blog content times two ! One post about how I opened my mouth before I thought it through and a second is evolving as I type this about all the cool Halloween cookie recipes I found on Pinterest when I was trying to decide what the heck to bake! If it’s happening in your life, it’s potential blog content.

 

• Take A Break: If you need to, take a day off, the blog universe will not crumble beneath your feet. Sometimes things come up, sick kids, website issues, or you just need a day off. It will be okay. Hopefully you’re not missing any deadlines you may have, but in general, taking a time out when you need it will be more beneficial than harmful. Taking a step back to refresh yourself physically and mentally will allow you to view your blog, your goals, and what you need to do with a more refreshed, less stressed perspective and that can bring on a whole new batch of ideas.

 

What tips do you have for new bloggers? What information do you find to be the most helpful? Let me know in the comments below and thanks for reading!