10 Best Tips to Help You Avoid “Blogging Burnout”
Blogging can be extremely rewarding when you are seeing benefits from it. However, we don’t always see immediate benefits from our efforts, and this, along with the constant publishing schedule can also cause us to wear down. When we wear down, our content also takes a hit in terms of quality and the level of research put into it. Face it, we all go through these times, and there isn’t much we can do to solve the problem other than to address it head-on.
Photo by kevindooley
Within this post, I’ve showcased some of the best ways that you can avoid “blogging burnout” in order to remain successful no matter what stage you are at blogging.
1. Take a Break from Blogging
Taking a break for an hour or a week can be just what you need after writing on your blog for several hours or several months straight. While blogging allows us to be more flexible than many other jobs, there are still a lot of requirements to keep our blogs running and receiving enough traffic to maintain a level of revenue.
2. Think About the Future
Dream about where you might be if you can just continue publishing. Sure, the short-term results might not really be evident, but you’ll begin to see them in the future, when you have a larger number of followers and subscribers. The key is working for the future, but living in the present, publishing content. It takes a lot of time and hard work to get tot his point.
3. Work in Mini Shifts
I like to get done entire posts in one sitting, but this is only my preference. Unless I can come back to a post within three days, it usually ends up in my “drafts” area and I end up deleting it a few months later. It’s just the way I like to publish to blogs, and it is a personal preference. If you are like this, it might help if you separate a longer post into mini shifts, publishing a section of the post every day, but doing multiple posts at a time, to keep yourself focused.
4. Develop a Proven Routine
Having a good routine that you are able to stick to will allow you to become more productive, eliminating the times where you need to publish a lot of content. All of these tips center around being more productive and eliminating the wasteful instances. Personally, I like to check my email inbox, respond to comments, filter through my RSS reader, then get to publishing on my blogs. For you, there might be a different routine that works better.
5. Write Your Thoughts Down
If you want to spend some time away from the computer/the Internet, it might be a good idea to jot down some notes in order to retain a stream of thoughts. This is also useful for brainstorming, as I’ve talked about in the past.
6. Relax
Point number one covered “taking a break,” but more important than taking a break might be relaxing. If you are stressing out about everything, what will you be able to accomplish, honestly? Not too much. You need to have a clear mind to blog, and when you don’t, you’ll suffer blogging burnout much, much faster. Perhaps you can listen to some relaxing music, do something you enjoy, or break away from your regular cycle to become more relaxed.
7. Create a lot of Content
What may solve blogging burnout faster is if you get the content portion of your schedule off your chest. It might be useful if you write a few posts, then save them as drafts (just a few edits away from publishing), as this will give you some free time in the immediate future to allow yourself to refocus on what needs to get done.
8. Find Someone to Help You
The blogging community is quite diverse. There will likely be someone out there who will be able to help you fill the void while you are suffering blogging burnout, whether from publishing too frequently, the repetition, or from the lack of ideas. The key to getting guest writers is having a good deal of traffic flowing to your blog and some form of credibility within your niche.
9. Switch Your Topic/Niche, or Simply QUIT
Seriously consider where you are and where you want to go before “hitting” the quit button. Blogging can be quite rewarding, but it certainly isn’t for everyone, and this could mean you. If you got into blogging simply because there were other people who saw success, and you have no interest in what you are currently writing about, then you might also want to consider changing your niche or your overall focus. Doing this may inspire you to continue – at least until you make a more conscious decision.
10. Have Trust in Yourself
Without having at least a little trust in yourself that you will see success, where will you be able to go? Trust yourself, and you’ll be able to go a lot further. It’ll help you through the hard times, the times where your blog’s traffic is declining, and when you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Conclusion
I’ve brought forth some of the more popular ways to avoid blogging burnout, but I now need your suggestions. What do you do to solve blogging burnout, and what do you think about the ideas above – which points were your favorite?
