This is a guest post from Mariana Ashley, a freelance writer and blogger.
Remember when you first started your blog? You probably stared at the blank WordPress page with incredibly high hopes of establishing yourself as a major player in the blogosphere. You may have imagined being able to quit your day job and become a professional blogger. A few months after starting your blog, you may have started to feel a little overwhelmed as reality hit you. Becoming a successful blogger takes a lot of work and time. With all your other obligations, it can be difficult to devote as much time to blogging as you perceive you need to. Fortunately, there are ways to fit blogging into your busy schedule. Here are a few of them:
1. Write while your spouse takes out the trash
The famous 1950s poet, Frank O’Hara, wrote most of his poems during the time he was clocked out from work for lunch. Over the course of several years, O’Hara wrote hundreds of insightful poems whenever he had a spare moment: at lunch, at work, before breakfast, at restaurants where he was waiting to meet friends. He was busy being an art critic and curator at the Museum of Modern Art, but he still found time for writing. Even if your day is jam-packed with obligations and responsibilities, you can still carve out some time for blogging. Try getting up an hour early in the morning to blog before your family gets up, or follow in O’Hara’s footsteps and write your blog posts during your lunch hour.
2. Educate yourself to become a better, faster writer
I know what you’re probably thinking. If you don’t have time to blog, you definitely don’t have time to take a writing course, right? Don’t be so fast to rule out the possibility of taking one, though. Online and offline writing courses can help you brush up on your skills and help you become a better, faster, more creative writer. If a six-hour online class helps you come up with article topic ideas quicker and write articles faster, you’ll save a lot of time in the long run. MIT offers quite a few free, online writing courses that might interest you. (Note from Nick: I’ve actually taken a few of these course, and they’re pretty amazing. Check them out! Consider taking a breather from blogging and checking out a few of them.
3. Start accepting guest posts
It can be difficult to reach your content quantity goals all on your own. So, you might want to consider accepting guest posts. Guest posts from qualified, intelligent bloggers can boost the overall appeal of your blog and allow you to take a vacation from blogging every once in a while without feeling as though you’re neglecting your precious blog. If you do decide to accept guest posts, make sure you provide prospective guest posters with some guidelines in terms of content quality. You want to discourage guest posters from sending you irrelevant, subpar blog posts.
4. Don’t worry so much about your page rank
If you want to be a successful blogger, you probably use search-engine friendly keywords in your blog posts and employ other SEO tactics. While SEO strategies are often useful, they aren’t always necessary, especially if you’re pressed for time. So, skip the half hour session of keyword research on days you’re particularly busy with other tasks. In the long run, all you need to do to rank well in search engines is write consistently good content, especially since the recent Google algorithm updates generally reward quality blogs instead of over-optimized blogs.
5. Don’t overexert yourself
You might set the lofty goal of writing a blog post a day. This goal may be realistic some weeks, and it may be totally unrealistic other weeks. Don’t get mad at yourself if you don’t reach your blogging goals all of the time. If you try to do too much with too little time, you might get blogger burnout, which is very difficult to recover from. So, write as often as you can without stressing yourself out. And remember that your mental health is a lot more important than the success of your blog.
No matter how busy you are, there are ways for you to find time for blogging, if you’re truly committed to doing so. Try out the tips above, and keep on striving for total web domination!
Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer and blogger who works in the higher education industry. She currently writes for a number of blogs about topics pertaining to pedagogical theory, technology, and the role of the prefrontal cortex in adolescent development. Her most recent professional project involves studying the trends of online colleges in Mississippi. She’s always eager to receive feedback regarding her online content. Please feel free to contact her at mariana.ashley031@gmail.com.
