Six Tips for Blogging Consistently

One of the most difficult things about being a blogger is maintaining the motivation to write regularly. Consistently updating your blog is one of the keys to blogging success. If you are working to grow a readership, you can easily lose it if your regulars come back and find nothing new. During the lifetime of this blog (nearly three years now) there have been a few times when I’ve taken breaks from upkeep of Pajama Professional.

I never plan these hiatuses, they generally happen due to circumstances in my life. The thing is, a blog can seriously suffer from a lack of consistency. This time, as I attempt to return to a regular posting schedule, I have asked myself what I can do to avoid future “breaks.” I have come up with a list of six ways to maintain consistency even when your life gets in the way.

• Choose a Topic you Love

  Never. Never. Never simply choose a topic because you think it will make you money. It might, but save it for a small, mostly-static site for which you don’t have to constantly find fresh content. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, I know i have, but it took my actually trying it a few times to realize how absolutely true it is.
  
  It comes down to this: it takes a long time to build up a site to the point where it makes substantial money. If you could create an overnight windfall with a topic you hated, you might feel motivated to stick with it. But that’s not how it works. Establishing a profitable site takes time: time to build it, time to continue adding to it and time for people to find it. Most bloggers don’t even stick with topics they love long enough to profit, by choosing something that doesn’t interest you, you are simply stacking more cards against yourself.

• Find a Timeless Niche

  People might care about Snuggies today. They might even want to buy some next week or next month. But will there be a huge demand for those ridiculous blanket/sweatshirts five years from now? If you choose to build your site around a topic that is gimmicky or fad-icky, you are most likely wasting your time. By the time that blog or website is established, the topic will be obsolete.
  
  So go for the evergreen topic; something people will always want or a topic about which they will always care. My new blog is about parenting – that’s not likely to lose popularity anytime soon. I once started a blog about Beanie Babies. Years after they were popular. I thought that there still must be plenty of obsessives out there and there weren’t really any other sites that were any good. I soon found out why. In four months I had about ten visitors and one comment – from a friend of mine. Learned. My. Lesson.
  
  Before I move on, let me qualify this. If you can pull a quickie blog together about a hot topic, throw some Adsense on it and a few quality posts without too much hassle, it’s not necessarily a bad idea. But when it comes to long-term, flagship (as Chris Garrett calls them) blogs, you don’t want to invest a ton of time on something that no one will care about a year from now. Quite note: if you click on that link to Chris’ blog, you can sign up for his email list or RSS feed and download his excellent e-book Killer Flagship Content – I highly recommend it and his blog in general.

• Set a Schedule

  This works better from some people than others. Some of us need a set writing time or else we’ll never get around to it. Some of us enjoy the freedom of working whenever we want and can actually do so without procrastinating. When you think of schedule, you probably think of a set number of hours on given days starting at a specific time, but there are other ways to schedule your writing that give you a little more room to breathe. And, let’s face it, creative types – as most bloggers are – aren’t always ready to write.
  

  What I use is a timer (see Bob on the right, I love him) and a to-do list. I’ll write more about my exact system in an upcoming post (I’ve just recently refined it), but basically I keep a master to-do list of all the projects and smaller tasks I want to complete. All of them. Then each day I just write down a short (5-10 items, depending on how long I have to work) list of things I want to work on or complete that day, choose a task to start, set a timer and when it goes off I move onto the next item. I may write down a few notes if I don’t finish the first item so I can pick it back up easily. I’ll cycle through each item for the day and then start over with any I haven’t finished or return to my master list to add more.

• Keep Evergreen Posts Filed Away

  There will always be days (or weeks) when you either don’t have time or just can’t think of anything to write. When this happens, you need to call for backup. Evergreen posts are articles about topics or ideas that never become stale. These topics are not faddish, date-related or about the ever-changing worlds of technology or politics (unless you’re reviewing a book).
  

  Having books or websites you visit regularly to get your brain going will help you to write these types of posts. You might find it difficult at first, but once you get the hang of it you’ll find that having three or four of these filed away will make you feel less pressured about having to write when you just can’t.

• Remember your Readers

  You are not writing your blog in a vacuum. You are writing to share with, help out and create a community of readers who enjoy what you have to offer. So make sure you stick to what they like. If your blog is about the joy of gardening, don’t suddenly start sticking in posts about how cute your cats are (unless it’s about catnip or something) or how much you love your granny. It’s fine to write about that stuff – in another blog.
  
  Readers like to feel that they know you, but you have to walk the line between boring daily mineutia and showing that you are just a normal person. How much you share about yourself varies greatly on the topic of your blog. If you write about parenting, for example, it is relevant to discuss how many kids you have and even, in moderation, how cute they are. However, if you write about French politics, keep the kids out of it. Your readers are your audience, your lifeblood, your reason for writing. And, if they’re not, then feel free to write endlessly about the new trick you taught your guppies yesterday.

• Remember your Advertisers

  If companies or individuals are paying to place ads on your site, then you need to keep them in mind when you are writing. Let me make clear what I do not mean by this: don’t plug advertisers’ products just because they’re paying for ads on your site, don’t let your advertisers dictate what you write about and don’t agree to write a positive review of something just because you’re getting paid. Well, I suppose you can do that if you want, but I consider it extremely unethical and a disservice to your readers who might go buy some piece of sh!t.
  
  That established, let me tell you what I do mean when I say to keep your advertisers in mind: keep fresh content on your site or no one will visit. If no one visits, no one sees the ads that you were paid to place. It’s not fair to your advertisers – or to you, really, because you won’t make an commissions if that was part of the deal. If you aren’t going post consistently, then don’t place ads from advertisers that pay a monthly fee. Instead, choose Clickbank ads or some other type of affiliate ad that pays for clicks or sales, not on a time schedule.

I hope that this helps you to stay motivated. And I hope it helps me too. Once I get off track and fixated on another project, this is the first blog I tend to desert. My new years resolution – I know, stupid – is to never go a full week without updating this blog. Wish me luck.