5 Best Ways to Spend Your Blogging Time
You’ve started a new blog and still feel the euphoria brought on by a new adventure. There is so much to be done - tweak the design, find advertisers, read ebooks, and brag to the relatives who don’t know a blog from a wiki. You start reading other blogs, drawing pictures of how your blog should look, looking for carpet to match your blog color scheme…but are all these activities really the best way to spend your valuable blogging time? Probably not, unless you really need that new carpet.
So, what is the best use of your time when working on a new blog? How do you prioritize all these wonderfully exciting tasks? Here’s my recommendation of the top 5 ways to spend your time on the new blog:
1. Research and write great posts. This is by far the most important thing you can do for your new blog. Content is king, plain and simple. Blogs are built on content, and if you build it, THEY WILL COME. And don’t forget to write enough to have a few saved for when you’re too busy to post.
2. Promote your blog through communication on the web. Promotion is an ongoing activity. You need people to know your blog exists. So, be sure to include your URL in signatures on forums, comment on other blogs, use social media, and email other bloggers. Even great content means nothing if it’s never read.
3. Tweaking the readability of your blog. We all love to improve the design of our blog, but some changes are more valuable then others. Focus first on making the blog readable by your visitors. If the text is too small or colors clash, the readers may just move on before giving your content a look. Remove clutter from your sidebar and eliminate intrusive advertising.
4. Begin work on a series of blogs on a particular topic. A series allows you to explore a topic in more detail. Do you have a list post (like this one) that could easily be converted into a post on each item in the list? Tada! An instant series. Now you just need to write the amazing content.
5. Do some blog maintenance work that you’ve been putting off. Take the time to do the less enjoyable tasks of blogging that are still important to your success. Back up your blog data. Check your links to be sure they are all still active (W3C Link Checker or 2Bone Link Checker). Clean out your spam comments.
If you’re like me and juggling many responsibilities in addition to your blog, you have to make the most out of your blogging time. Be sure that your actions are moving you toward your goals and not just wasting time. It’s too easy to spend a couple hours at the computer and walk away wondering what you’ve really accomplished. So, what else could you be doing to maximize your blogging time?
[PhotoCredit:G&M]
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
I think these are really great tips for those who has “started a new blog and still feel the euphoria brought on by a new adventure” and for those who is just going to start his/her own blog.
Thank you Jim.
Thanks Jim; great comments.
But, yeah, what other activities do you recommend to “monetize” your blog? (This is probably another post! :o)
These are great tips for new bloggers. New blogs often appear to be just slapped together and no thought put into it. It is almost like the writers dont care.
Content creation, replying e-mails and marketing our blogs for more traffic alone will eat up a lot of time. Sometimes, I don’t feel that I have a need to organize my blogging time but rather, how I can limit it for other activities.