Blogging works well when done regularly, however it’s not always easy to keep up the momentum.
As a tool in the online marketing tool box, blogging is still very useful. Not as sexy and trendy as other techniques, but it can really help your SEO, social media and content objectives.
How do you keep up the momentum and blog regularly?
It’s a question on my mind currently as I have taken about a ten month break from regular blogging. I simply lost the taste for it and it no longer did what I wanted it to achieve.
I forgot some of the basic rules of blogging and blogged my way over a cliff.
The idea of tapping out another blog on the keyboard filled me with a loathing and I always found something more interesting to spend my time on.
Looking back over what worked and what did not I learned a few things about my own style and about what does and doesn’t work. We all have a style and it’s important you give room for it as it helps to distinguish you from your competitors.
There are a numbers mistakes I have made and I think they are common as I have seen many other bloggers do them. (I’ve made a lot more than these, but we have to start somewhere)
- When I write I over think, simplicity is the key in blogging. Complex concepts communicated simply and without fuss
- I expect others to find things interesting just because I do (no one wants to hear about the Second Punic War)
- Readers of this blog need solutions quickly and are time poor and I sometimes waffle, not getting to the point quick enough
- I forget that lessons need to be retaught and just because I wrote about a topic once, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be revisited from a different angle
- Not everyone has my humour, or my politics or my love of etymology
- Being useful is far more important than being seen as clever
Most of my failings come from a writers arrogance, I word it like that because it sounds better than “my arrogance”. But before I beat myself up too much, I think it’s quite common when you spend a lot of time studying and working hard in one sector to start to reshape your thinking about that sector.
It’s hard to work in a field for a long time and then realise and admit that you have headed off the path and into the wilderness.
it’s important for me to share, because it may have happened to you and it resonates. Or it may be happening to you right now and it can help you rekindle the fire before the dying embers go cold.
Hopefully you realise everyone goes through this and withe a little help you can keep going, so as able to reach your objective.
The golden time is when coming fresh at a subject.
There are no places not to discover, no rock which you think is not turning over and so you discover more and delight more. This fuels the desire to learn even more and to hone your craft as a blogger.
This post may well be over thinking it, although I like to call it, but hopefully I have simplified the process enough for it to engage and empathise with you the reader and blogger.
Empathy is the new black
Empathy is something I keep reading about. It is crucial in getting your message across and convincing people your words are something worth giving time for. It may be my past blog posts did not empathise enough.
I actually took an empathy test and scored quite low, although not as low as some as my other male friends. And so I now make an overt effort to show empathy in my blogging. Not in some wishy washy, overly emotional way. But in a way that shows I care about the problems of the readers of this blog and that I am prepared to put the sack of grey mush that resides in my cranial cavity to the task.
The reality strikes me that I am hear to help you solve your problem, and not to create a blog that is for me and my own ego.
The aim is to solve problems around online marketing issues, specifically those of an SEO, social media and content nature.
Now we are here, where do we go?
For me it’s about listening to people and finding problems and attempting to solve them.
Think about doing something similar in your own sector, especially giving thought to how empathy can be integrated into your blogging as most blog posts (mine included) lack this important ingredient.
Showing expertise is as simple as showing empathy, sharing knowledge and helping solve problems that your audience want help with.
My next few blog posts will be covering this area. Come back if you find this stuff interesting.