I’ve been writing things down on my own blog for a few decades. I wish more people did too. If you’d like to have a personal blog but struggle finding things to write about, here are a few tips that may help.
- Don’t post about what you will do, post about what you’ve already done – In other words, I try to avoid the "I should blog more" posts and just get on with blogging more. Also, I like posting photos and status messages sometime after they’ve happened.
- Find a theme – Niche blogs do extremely well. So stay on topic. Personal blogs do less well but they should still have a theme and that theme should be you.
- Create reasons to post – My What I saw series and observations series give me a reason to write. Should I feel writer’s block I can fall back to one of the series.
- Have a schedule – I try to post one or two posts per day prior to 9am. Some are scheduled in advance some aren’t. Everything else that happens is completely random.
- Be totally fine with missing the schedule – Sometimes I don’t blog for a few days or weeks due to time off away from the computer or just being focused on something else. And I’m totally ok with that.
- Don’t post test posts – Create a staging or a local development environment to test your site’s features. It is really easy to do.
- Try not to care about stats – Stats are useful for a number of reasons but obsessing over them won’t help you at all. Check them once a month to see how you’re doing.
- Create an inspiration list – In your notebook or notes app write down some topics you’d like to write about someday. Make it long. Like, 50 items. Don’t worry too much about what should be on it just start writing the list down. When you can’t think of anything to write about look at that list and simply pick any one at all and check it off.
- Subscribe to a bunch of blogs that interest you – More than likely the conversations started by others will give you more than enough to write about.
- Perfect is the enemy of good – Just hit publish.
- Have fun! – I’ve thoroughly enjoyed blogging all these years and I don’t imagine I’ll be stopping any time soon.
If you have a neglected blog or are just starting one – jump in! Oh, and don’t forget to email me the URL.