I always forget to write. It’s strange because I love to write. What’s worse is how I tell my clients they should post to their blog regularly (even every month or quarter if that’s all they can muster). I tell them to keep up with their blog then rarely post to my own blog. It’s not so much hypocrisy as disorganization.
You might identify with this problem. ... Or maybe you don’t. But I’m going to talk about slacker blogging and why it sucks.
Why blog?
I’m sure there are as many answers as I have readers. Probably more. Yes, probably a whole lot more. And any regular readers I may have had probably haven’t been sticking around waiting for me to write again.
Okay, however many reasons there are to keep a blog, I bet we can come up with some broad categories. Let’s give it a try:
- Talk about yourself (we all do it, and it’s okay)
- Share/demonstrate your knowledge/experience on a particular topic
- Build search-engine value for your website (great for your organic search results)
- Start or add to a conversation
- Build an audience
I’m sure I’ll add to that list as I continue writing this piece.
The point is (and I’m reminding myself as I tick out the keystrokes) that there are many good reasons to keep a blog. Some are good for you, some are good for business and some are even good for the world as a whole (in a small or large way).
Why am I a slacker blogger?
Some people have an easy time keeping their blog up to date. Maybe ‘easy’ is the wrong word. But they make it happen. I am not one of those people. Even though I know the benefits of keeping a blog, I often find myself allowing lulls to suck any momentum I have dry.
It’s not easy to keep writing. Especially if you haven’t “established” your blog, i.e. you don’t have much (any?) readership.
For a while, I was thinking too much about how my business could gain from blogging. I got swept up by the Red-Bull-drinking, linkbait-chumming, “10 reasons to write top 10 lists"-hyping, soul-sucking blog strategy for a while. Not that I was any good at it. But it was really hard to keep up with.
I didn’t enjoy keeping a blog. So I became a slacker blogger.
Also, I didn’t have any organization about my blogging. Not just my blogging—my work as a whole. There wasn’t much of a separation between work, play and home life. Well honestly, as of today work is still one huge gray-area.
But I wrote out a schedule last week that is designed to keep me on task, keep regular working hours, stop working so much outside of regular working hours and get more done in less time without so much perfectionist obsessing. If it all goes well, I’ll balance my schedule instead of working marathons, obsessing about one segment of my business and neglecting the rest, then starting a new marathon to get things back in balance and so on.
Do you think I burned out a lot working this way?
The last reason I might be a slacker blogger is because I always want to write about some subject instead of meaning to write about some subject.
Okay, tonight’s post is an exception. I didn’t mean to write this. Maybe it will show in the writing. I think this is more of a catharsis than a great piece of blogging. At the same time, it’s sort of an installation of a hinge that hopefully forces me to swing out of being a slacker blogger.
But what about meaning to write?
One thing I always used to want to write was a post of common CSS issues that came up just enough to be a total pain in the ass but not enough to remember how to fix. Things like IE float issues and remembering to set display: block; for some quirky fix. I’m sure you have your favorite if you’re a webby person like me.
Anyway, I always wanted to instead of meaning to. So it never happened. You have to mean it and will it into happening.
So how do I stop being a slacker blogger?
Well, if I’m right, I need to focus on three things: enjoy what I’m writing, stay organized and really mean to write out my ideas.
If I manage to make that happen, I bet I write often and well. If I keep it up, I think I’ll find all kinds of momentum to keep coming back.
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