You know what I mean. You’ve got that little voice whispering that if your posts don’t measure up to some impossibly high standard you’ve set, all is lost, and the world will know you’re a fraud.
The good news is, it simply isn’t true. You don’t need every post to be a 2,000-word masterpiece or the final definitive word on your topic. Instead, you need content that gives your readers what they want. That’s it. Do your readers want to know the latest news or the best methods? Then that’s what you give them. Forget trying to be a great writer and instead focus on being your readers’ ‘friend in the business,’ and you’ll be an AMAZING blogger.
Here are 10.5 more tips to take some of the blogging pressure off of you and put the fun back into blogging:
Make a posting schedule, then stick to it as regularly as you brush your teeth. Surprisingly, having a blogging schedule makes it easier for you to blog. It provides soft deadlines that keep you motivated to sit down and write. You won’t be able to put off your blogging if your readers expect a new post every Tuesday and Friday, and you know it.
Keep a running list of blogging ideas. Use a program like Evernote to keep track of your thoughts and the resources you can draw from when writing your posts.
Forget being original. Seriously. Every idea is built upon or inspired by someone else’s opinion. So give credit where credit is due, provide your unique twist or take on the subject and relax – no one expects you to reinvent anything.
Re-purpose your content and other people’s content, too. Curate, list, pull bits and pieces from here and there – it’s all good. Just give credit to everyone you sourced the content. And go back to your content and see if you can’t update it, re-purpose it, mix it up, or whatever. Oddly, if you’ve been blogging for over a year, you’ve got a small goldmine of content you can mine to create new content.
Be more of a reporter and less of an expert. Being the go-to expert in your niche is difficult, especially when you’re new to blogging. The pressure can become so unbearable that you cease to write, afraid you’ll pen something that will make you look foolish in your readers’ eyes.
But magic will happen if you focus on reporting instead of being the absolute authority. You’ll feel freer to express your opinions and find it easier to write posts. Because you are referencing other leaders and experts in your niche, you become your authority to your readers.
Mix up your content. Are you only writing blog posts? Then add videos. Are you only podcasting? Then write blog posts. Limiting yourself to one media means limiting the number of people who will engage in and benefit from your content.
Short is great. There was a time when this suggested (actually, I saw this again quite recently) that no post should be under 2,000 words, and all posts should take days to write and be the absolute authority on whatever topic you’re writing.
Hogwash. I briefly mentioned this initially – write as much as you need to. If you can cover your topic in 200 words, DO IT. If it takes 2,000 words, ensure you’re holding your readers’ attention for the ENTIRE 2,000.
It reminds me of the “short sales letter vs. long sales letter” debate. It’s a ridiculous debate, and here’s why: A blog post or a sales letter should be exactly as long as it needs to be and no longer. Peri
Stop leaving terrific blog comments on other people’s blogs. Seriously. You just read a post on a high-traffic blog, and you’ve got your own opinion or insight to share that will help that blog’s readers.
Please don’t do it. Instead, create your blog post and link to the original blog. Then let the original blog know you mentioned and linked to your post. This way, your blog has more great content, and who knows? You might get a backlink from the blog you referenced.
Use images. Every. Time. Maybe more than once, too. It’s irrefutable that ideas work at grabbing attention, so make sure that every post you make has at least one image. And be sure to place a caption under the image because people are far more likely to read the image caption than anything else on the page (other than the headline, of course.)
Publish your articles on other sites. Sites like LinkedIn, The Huffington Post, and many others allow content to be republished on their sites as long as it fits their guidelines. It’s a terrific way to attract new subscribers by posting a link to your profile or blog.
And what about Google’s duplicate content penalty? The exact content penalty doesn’t apply to syndication or curation. If it did, you’d never see a primary news site appear at the top of the search results because they all subscribe to services that help them get duplicate content, such as the Associated Press. And bloggers who frequently syndicate their content to other quality sites report that they receive no penalties whatsoever.
10.5. Ask for the subscription. Ask. And ask. But don’t be obnoxious. You wrote a post on getting traffic and got a free report on even more ways to get traffic. Ask them to subscribe right there at the end of your post. “To get 27 more ways to get targeted, free traffic with the push of a button, simply tell me where to send the report, and it’s yours.”
If you’ve been having trouble blogging regularly, hopefully, reading this has made you realize that blogging doesn’t need to be stressful. The rules are not as rigid as some would have you believe, and the most important thing is to give your readers what they want and lots of it, in whatever form it might take.
No comments yet.