This is post 4 on a mini series on combatting Blog Apathy
• Develop a Posting Schedule – it’s amazing what you can produce if you give yourself a deadline. Whilst for some people the idea of schedules and plans might have the opposite effect – for many of us they help keep us going. My posting goal is 25-35 posts per day – knowing what I’m aiming for helps keep me on track. Whether you’ve got a goal of 2 daily posts, or 500 monthly posts some goals can help get your blogging into gear.
• Get a Guest Blogger – put a little new blood into your blog by inviting someone else to join you in posting either while you take a short break to rejuvenate or to blog alongside you. I’ve recently added a few bloggers to a handful of my blogs and have really enjoyed both the pressure that it’s taken off me but also the energy and fresh ideas that they’ve brought.
• Read other’s blogs – sometimes its easy to become so focused upon blogging that we forget to interact with other bloggers. I remember a few months ago realizing that I rarely really read other blogs any more (apart from those I scanned each day for useful information to blog about). Get back to basics and actually read other blogs – you might just find that in doing so you rediscover the reason you started your own blog in the first place. In addition to that you’ll probably find yourself stimulated to bounce off their blogs with your own.
• Interact with other bloggers – connected to the last point I also find it very useful to not only read the work of others but to converse with them. I regularly chat via instant messaging or phone with other bloggers – in doing so we encourage and inspire each other to break through the dry times. So leave a comment somewhere, start an IM conversation, send an email – talk to someone. Don’t let blogging become an insular lonely thing – rather take advantage of the relational aspects of blogging.
Shortening individual blogroll categories
Darren at ProBlogger is doing 31 days of tips to improve your blog, and some of his readers are joining him by posting tips on their own blogs. Yesterday I grabbed one idea from all the reading, sorry I can’t find the blog I got this from. 10 demerit…
Now I’m onboard with all of these except the posting schedule. I’m not sure that the pressure to produce posts is productive, esp. when you’re in apathy mode. If you’re writing junk posts, don’t punch out 10 of them!! Pause, come up with some good stuff to say, & then come back strong!!
I tend to agree with John. I benefit from letting it go for a couple days to recharge my batteries. That’s what suits my posting style.
But I’m not a “Pro” Blogger [at least until I buy a t-shirt!] and I can see that a large part of Darren’s success has come from consistant high volume of quality posts.
[…] robably not going to cut it. As if that isn’t bad enough, in a previous article on blogger apathy, he had the following to say: […]
hehe – you guys are one step ahead of me. See the last post in this series later today for my endorsement of ‘a break’.
Perhaps I should have started this series by saying that the tips I’m giving are some of the things that have worked for me and/or other bloggers that I’ve coached. I guess it is about finding what works for you – for some schedules work, for others they don’t in a similar way to each of the other tips will work for some but not others.
[…] The War Against Blogger Apathy Rolls On… August 5th, 2005 by Mark In Declaring War on Blogger Apathy IV ProBlogger D […]
You mention 25-35 posts per day.. how many blogs is that divided over? I had been trying to do one post per day for a while and just alternate between links and longer posts.
[…] I’d rather not talk about comment spam because that could take a day or two, instead I like what Darren referred to a number of days ago, “Interact with other bloggers.” He said “leave a comment somewhere, start an IM conversation, send an email – talk to someone. Don’t let blogging become an insular lonely thing – rather take advantage of the relational aspects of blogging.” […]
I’m a chinese blogger,and I ‘ve been studying your serial post of how to build a better blog for a couple of days.I think your post is wonderful and helpful.Thank you very much!
I started my blog not long ago,but google never search it ,yes i submit my url.I don’t know why .Hope you can help me! Thank you !
my blog :http://sorryle.blogspot.com
my email:[email protected]
Some more excellent tips I tend to aim for 1 post per day however to make that post a very useful source for others.
I will increase this as time goes by.
Will.