With a new year comes inevitable resolutions, dreams, and goals. While you probably have your own fair share of personal resolutions – like losing weight, eating healthier, or reading more – it’s also likely that you have some business goals. And for many of us, the number one goal is to be more consistent with blogging.
While resolutions are great, they’re notoriously hard to keep. Whether it’s fitness or blogging, the high rate of failure is generally due to two primary things: (1) a lack of specific goals or vision, and (2) making the resolution more difficult than it should be to obtain.
If you want to actually achieve your blogging resolutions this year, you need to make things easier on yourself.
5 Tips to Make Blogging Easier on Yourself
Blogging doesn’t have to be super challenging and arduous. In fact, the more difficult you make blogging, the less likely it is that you’ll achieve your goals.
With that being said, here are practical tips you can implement to increase your chances of actually seeing your blogging resolutions through this year.
1) Choose a Simple Blogging Platform
The first step is to make sure you’re using a simple blogging platform that makes the process of publishing and sharing content easy. WordPress is the platform most bloggers end up settling on.
“You have enough to worry about without the complexities of an intricate blogging platform. WordPress is the most used blogging platform. It’s very simple to use, even for those with no experience in blog design,” Green Residential points out. “It’s also well-supported with plenty of free resources.”
2) Develop SMART Goals
You have blogging goals and resolutions, but are they SMART? In other words, are they specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely? In order to achieve your blogging goals with greater ease and consistency, you need to ensure they adhere to these criteria.
Recommended for you: Some Effective Blogging Platforms in the Current Scenario (Infographic).
3) Create a Content Calendar
If you sit down in front of the computer each morning and try to develop a blog post from scratch, you’re going to get burned out. You’ll also lack vision, which is problematic when consistency is the goal.
The key to experiencing long-term blogging success is to develop a content calendar that clearly outlines your content strategy for the next 6 to 12 months. Having this sort of organization and perspective will keep you in line.
4) Use Tools to Streamline the Process
Some things you must do manually in order to be successful, but there are also plenty of aspects of blogging that you can either automate or streamline, with the assistance of powerful and cost-effective tools.
Since visuals play such a critically important role in modern blogging, you’ll want to find a tool that helps you create compelling visual content. If you don’t want to take the time to learn a complex tool like Photoshop, something like Designsta might be right up your alley.
“The thing I love about Designsta is that it sets you up with a ton of fully customizable templates in addition to allowing you to work your magic from scratch – which means it’s great for novices and pros alike,” blogger Tiffany Hathorn says.
Other “blogging” resources she recommends include Google Drive, Buzzsumo, Yoast SEO, and Fiverr.
5) Get Guest Bloggers Involved
If you have to write every single blog post on your own, you’re going to get burned out pretty quickly. One way to ensure you stay fresh, without compromising your blog, is to work with guest bloggers and invite people to contribute to your site.
What you’ll find is that there are lots of people online who are willing to provide you with free content in return for some small favors – like a couple of backlinks to their websites, or mentions on social media.
While you’ll occasionally have people email you about guest blogging opportunities, you may have to do some of your own outreach as well. This guide from blogger Harsh Agrawal has some good pointers.
You may also like: 8 Tools that Make it Easy to Organize and Simplify Your Blogging Life.
Don’t Make It Harder Than It Has to Be
The more you can simplify the blogging process, the more likely it is that you’ll accomplish your goals and stick with your resolutions. While blogging might not be the most fun thing on your website to-do list, it’s perhaps the most important in an age where content is the currency of modern digital marketing.
