Maintaining Momentum in Blogging Series
One of the ways that I find helpful to get back into the momentum of writing a blog is to set aside specific times for writing.
I find it is very easy to get distracted by the many different elements of maintaining a blog, to the point where I find it hard to do the core element – writing posts. As a result setting aside time for writing has become increasingly important for me.
I do this by setting aside time each day (usually the same time each day) for writing but also setting aside longer times on a weekly basis (ie at present I’m experimenting with making Mondays ‘writing day’). I’ve also at times taken even longer periods of time to go away for the sole purpose of writing (ie for a weekend).
I find that setting this time aside away from email, away from IM and even away from being online altogether really lifts the quality and style of my writing.
Of course in the midst of the rest of my week I do write posts – but they tend to be more ‘newsy’ and ‘link posty’ in nature.
I guess ultimately this ‘tip’ is common sense. The things you are intentional about putting time aside for are the things which you have a good chance of doing. The same tip could be written in terms of ‘scheduling time for design’, ‘scheduling time for blog promotion’, ‘scheduling time for Ad optimization’ and many other basic blogging tasks – but ultimately it is a blog’s content that is at it’s core and I’d recommend putting aside time for it’s creation as one of the first things a blogger should do each day.
I think it’s a valid tip in a most general sense – if you want to hold yourself to long term goals, then you need to pace yourself and be disciplined enough to work on the project at regular intervals and in a goal setting way.
General advice for any long-term project, I think.
2c.
Yes, self discipline is very important for every blogger. Actually, I feel that if you want to make money and shine in blogging then you must take it like other jobs. For example, suppose you are an executive of a company and you must go to office by 9 AM and do your work until office time finishes (5 PM in most places I guess). You must have the same attitude about blogging.
I’ve certainly found that I’m more productive if I set aside particular times to write exclusively, with no distractions. I generally use a few hours at the weekend to write major posts that go into detail on particular subkects. I then spread these out over the following week. These are then padded out with either breaking news stories that need to get posted immediately, general news stories that can be delayed to fill a gap, or general thoughts/opinions/comments on stories on other sites that don’t require a huge amount of writing time.
I find that this method balances both the site content and my time effectively, meaning that during the week when a full time job doesn’t allow time for writing long articles, the site still maintains an even keel.
I also recently went on holiday for a week and setup a series of posts to publish while I was absent. While this was time consuming initially, it meant that not only did the site maintain a daily presence, but also that I could relax in the knowledge that there was pressure to return and begin posting immediately, as I added a couple of days overlap on my return. This gave me two days to catch up on emails and news without needing to post if I didn’t want to. A weeks absence is great if you niche is perhaps a little too thin to maintain a high post rate, as it allows news to build up and can be used on your return.
I think one of the best bets in terms of keeping momentum in blogging is to keep a list of idea’s so that if if you ever seem to run dry you always have something to write about.
Other than that, the best and only way to keep momentum is to write something everyday. Even if its not worth publishing, you have to write something.
I have only recently gotten into blogging, and I agree that setting time aside to blog is an important step in putting worthwhile content out onto the internet.
It’s certainly a lot better than worrying about what to write all the time.
However, I find that the more I write consistantly, the easier it becomes to think of things to write about. I start to see the world through a different set of eyes, eyes that are always looking for things to express.
I’ve found it’s helpful to divide the time into segments of no more than 45 minutes each. It helps to avoid fatigue.
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If we do not love about the topic, maybe we will sometimes get bored, but if we really like the topic, I think make write of one by one article will be fun.
Not every one have time to write everyday, except your main job is as writer. Person with other main job, have to a allocation time to write the blog in their busy time, such as tell the story about what happen in the last day, and this also could become time to relax maybe.
When you said the posts that you write mid-week “tend to be more ‘newsy’ and ‘link posty’ in nature”, I realized that I was putting too much pressure on myself to post something original everyday. I see tons of things in my news and blog exploration that are worth a quick comment, but I don’t often do that. I think that aside from having times to write I should probably decide how many more involved posts I should be doing per week (maybe just 3 or 4) and post interesting links and news items on the other days. Thanks!!! That really helps!
Blogging Productivity Tip: Set A Time For Writing Posts
Do you ever feel like you don’t have enough time for blogging?Darren Rowse explains how to schedule your writing times for maximum blogging success. The other day I offered some business blogging productivity tips that go well with Darren’s the…
[…] Schedule Writing Times […]
I need to start doing this. Currently my posts are sporadic through out the day or week. If I could set a schedule for writing, I think that I could do much better.
I have a full time job and I find it not easy to write post constantly as many times I will be distracted by other blog maintaining tasks like changing the layout, experiments with ads, backup the database and files etc. I should start schedule some specific times for writing posts.
Writing is one of the hardest things to do… if you want to write quality content. This is even more so if you are running multiple websites with different topics. It would be nice if we can hire people to do this full time, but I think most websites are not there yet. Some websites are as good as newspapers, but I guess that’s for the lucky few.
I think maintaining a blog is one of the hardest tasks you can achieve. You read so many these days which are just crap, i.e. look what I found on youtube, etc….what’s the point? I would prefer to read a detailed article or funny story, etc. But again, as you so rightly point out, it’s so hard to find the time to generate such quality. Life is just one big blog lol.
I remember when the word “blog” first appeared on the scene, It was something that an elderly neighbour done instead of a diary because they were trying to be cool and keep up with the 21st century.
How times have changed.
Ive only recently got into the online community myself and its unbelievable how complicated the world of blogging actually is.