Blogging Is A Journey

Blogging is a great outlet for writers who want to grow and connect with an audience or just to have an outlet for something you enjoy…”Writing”!  This provides us a way to go in depth over a social media post, aka micro-blogging outlet like Twitter.  I’ve enjoyed blogging for years and it’s given me a place to hangout with others in my little corner of cyber-space.  If you’ve spent anytime at all blogging or writing, you know it can be tough and at times bring some stress with it.

Over the years I’ve learned by being burnt by fire and gleaming knowledge from others who were better writers than I was.  So here is my list of some tips I use that I hope will help you in your blogging journey.

 
1. You never know when a good blogging idea is going to pop up, so put those blog ideas down on paper, or keep a digital list of sorts.  I personally go old school and use a notebook for my blogging ideas along with sticky notes as I use different colors for different topics.  It may sound like madness but it works for me and helps keep me organized for my writing schedules.

2. If you have time and can do it, schedule posts throughout the week.  With my schedule a week or two out is all I can do but most of the time it’s 4-5 days out.  Keep a backlog of posts if you are trying to hit a specific count of posts per week or month that you can quickly choose from as well.

3. Find you some blogging friends that will allow you to do guest blogging, and or co-blogging as that’s a great way to market your content and grow each others sites.

4. Browse through images you want to use for your blog posts and keep a stock in a folder for future posts.  This will help with the last minute search for an image, though lately I’ve been making my own depending on the topic.  See what works best for you and your schedule.

5. Make yourself a list of items to check before you hit that publish button.

6. Break up your posts into multiple parts if they are running long. This will help keep the readers attention and also coming back for those additional parts.

7. Use those comment sections as it can be a gold mine.  Watch for questions and good topics for conversations and even potential notes for future posts.

8. Life happens and if you are like me well then blogging is a hobby, so don’t stress if you don’t make those post counts you wanted.  Best thing to shoot for is consistency but when you can’t don’t sweat it.  I try to post twice a week but that doesn’t always happen.

9. Don’t fret about reusing previous posts or topics either.  You don’t want to repost the same exact post you’ve already used, but when you are in a crunch rework an old one and use that thing.

10. Give yourself some grace. This is a journey full of learning and it’s going to be filled with mistakes, and curve balls so when you find that crazy typo or sentence that doesn’t make sense, don’t worry.  Learn from those mistakes and make this blogging journey fun and something you want to become better at.

These are my bread and butter items I use whether I’m writing a small blog post, or working on my novel series.  I would love to hear from you all on any thoughts or comments you have.  Would you all add anything to this list?