Starting a blog is easy. Keeping it up, for many people, is the tough part. The newness wears off. We get busy. We run out of things to say. Pretty soon, the blog has gone the way of most of our New Years resolutions.
What has kept this blog going at a fairly regular pace for nine years? What has kept it fresh and fun to write? In this post, I am going to share what has made a difference for me in hopes that it will help other bloggers.
Compose posts now. Post them in the future.
The posts you are read on any given day are not composed that day. They are sometimes composed weeks ahead of time. They are composed when the thought occurs and schedule to post on a day which seems appropriate. Blogger allows me to schedule a date for the post to appear. I can write the post when the thought is hot, schedule a date, and let Blogger handle the rest.
I generally post three times per week. It's not that I have been writing at that interval. Sometimes I will write three or four posts in a single day. Sometimes I will go a week without writing anything. We all get busy and at other times, we all have "down time." I use some of that down time to compose material that will automatically appear during the busier times.
What I write has to matter to me, and if it matters to me, maybe it will somehow touch you as well. Remind yourself to post.
Anyone who knows me well knows how important my "Repeating Task List" is to me. I wish I had a nickel for every time I hear someone say, "I do it when I think about it." The same holds true for me. The only difference is that I set up a system that causes me to think about it when I need to be thinking about it.
I have a repeating task in my digital task list reminding me to compose new blog posts. This reminder appears every Monday. My goal is to compose five new posts that day. I believe in "batching" my work. When I get into the blogging mindset, and am "on a roll," I find my self more successful than if I write a single post at more regular intervals. Once a week, a task stares me in the face reminding me to post.
Read.
Material does not have to come exclusively out of our heads. Responding to the thoughts of others and putting a different twist on those thoughts makes for interesting material. We can also take current topics and combine the viewpoints from different sources into something that is fresh and interesting.
Take notes on the fly.
Good ideas occur at unlikely times. They come to us in the middle of meetings, sitting at a traffic light, during conversations, and reading the works of others, just to name a few. My phone is never more than an arm's length from me. A memo pad (that also holds my drivers license and credit cards) is always in my shirt pocket. I realized back in high school that good ideas, like opportunity, sometimes knock only once. Getting it from the brain to paper (or in recent years, digitized) is one of the best habits I ever acquired. When the idea occurs, I create a new task in my digital system, enter the basic idea, and include the word "blog" somewhere in the task. The search capabilities of that digital list allow searching for the word "blog" and seeing a list of all of the blog ideas accumulated.
Make it matter to you.
I enjoy going back and reading my own blog. I hope that does not come across as egotistical. If I don't enjoy it, I shouldn't think that you will enjoy it. What I write has to matter to me, and if it matters to me, maybe it will somehow touch you as well.
Comments matter.
For those who comment from time to time, thanks! From my end, I can never be sure what resonates with others or where I need to go into more detail. Your comments help steer the ship. They also remind me that my time putting this blog together does make a difference.
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