Welcome to the new Pick My Brain series! I truly love being a resource for people, and feel grateful for the opportunity to share the things that I’ve learned and that I love. I wish I could sit down for a cup of tea with every person that asks to pick my brain, but there just aren’t enough hours in the week! So every so often, I’ll ask for your “pick my brain” questions over on Instagram and answer them here. It’s a great way for me to serve you as a resource, and hopefully help more people at the same time! Here’s one of our recent questions: How do you stay motivated and inspired to blog?
One of the number one questions I’ve been asked over the years is how I keep up with making new content over and over for the blog, both creatively and logistically. In other words, how do I keep coming up with ideas, and how do I maintain that schedule of actually getting those ideas out into the world?
And probably equally to the point — can I help teach other people how to do the same? For sure.
If you’re a blogger, or you want to start a blog, I think the starting is truly the hardest thing. There’s a lot of initial sweat equity and muscle that goes into a blog before it kind of starts running on momentum. But if I were to break it down, throughout the life of a blog, these would be my biggest takeaways on how to stay motivated and inspired.
How to Stay Motivated and Inspired to Blog
Make sure you are deeply passionate about your topic or niche. And know the reason you want to blog about it in the first place! Are you sharing this topic because you love it? Because you think the world needs education on it? Because you want to explore it more? Because you want to try to monetize? Make sure that when you head into the world of blogging you have an idea of all of these things.
Other questions to ask yourself: Is this a hobby? Do I ever want this to be my job? How much time do I want to commit to this? Who will this help?
Just start. Analysis paralysis has killed many a blog. If it’s in your heart to do it, just do it. Don’t worry too much about the platform or the design or making the whole thing perfect before you launch. Just start. All of that can come later. And truly, the content is the most important part of it all. So make sure that is solid, and go for it.
Create a schedule that you can commit to. Once you’ve started your blog, the best thing you can do for it and for yourself is to be consistent. If you’re trying to grow a readership, they want to know when they can expect to see a new piece of content on your blog. And if you’re trying to create something really great, it’s a garden that deserves to be tended regularly.
But! Consistency can mean lots of things. Maybe it means you sit down and work on your blog for 3 hours every week. Maybe it means an hour a day. Maybe it means you commit to putting up one new post every month, or week. There are no rules. But I can promise you that you’ll be more motivated to keep blogging if you set a schedule or routine for yourself that you enjoy and can commit to.
Keep an idea journal or spreadsheet. If you’re even remotely interested in blogging, I’m guessing you have a creative brain. And people with creative brains always have ideas bouncing around! Keep an idea journal or a spreadsheet and add to it whenever an idea hits you. You don’t have to follow through and blog the idea right away. But it’s a huge help to have a running backlog of concepts that you can go back through, tweak, and share. So that way when your creative well runs dry, you have a book of inspiration all ready.
Reframe the way you think of your blog. First and foremost, blogs should be a resource to readers. I consider myself super lucky every day to be able to help people with the information that I share here. I don’t come here just to talk about myself. I share our lives in the hopes that it will help someone else in some way (a recipe, a DIY idea, a great place to travel, a lesson about business or parenting, and more).
So as you are creating content for your blog, think about that. Think about it as a resource for someone else. Not just an outlet for yourself. It’s hugely rewarding and it packs your blog with value.
Additionally, if you’re trying to break into blogging as a career, or using your blog to boost another business, reframe your blog in your mind as integral to your life. At that point it’s not a hobby — it’s a portion of your job. Treat it with the time, care, and effort that you would your other work.
Keep evolving and learning. When I started Lovely Indeed, it was a DIY blog filled with all of the projects we were doing for our wedding. Now, almost ten years later, it’s a family lifestyle blog with an emphasis on female solopreneurship.
How did that happen? My life evolved and I brought the blog with it. And that’s okay! People evolve and things change. Keep evolving. Listen to your audience and what they want. Listen to your heart and what it wants. Keep learning new things to share and explore. It makes it all so worthwhile.
Speaking of learning, I’ve been on a huge learning curve this year writing The Productivity Tool Kit. But again, I felt like there was a need and a call for this knowledge that I was dying to share, so it was the perfect storm to include a new facet into Lovely Indeed. As your journey with your blog continues, you’ll probably experience similar things.
If you love the info in this post, stay tuned on October 1 when we launch The Productivity Tool Kit, because there’s so much more juicy stuff in there — ESPECIALLY if you’re trying to stay motivated to blog and the productivity is what gets you down. I’m so proud of what we have put together. xoxo
LOVE your blog!!!
You offer great ideas to keep us motivated each day. It is really hard when you manage a business on your own from home to keep the work flow going. These are great ideas. Thank you.