Balancing your day job and blog can be a tricky task to complete; never mind the additional add-ins that come with having a social life and a family.
I’ve been blogging for almost 4 years – through both school and a full-time job – and it’s safe to say that I’ve found it difficult. Creating post ideas and finding time to dedicate to blogging is hard, especially when you only get 2 hours of ‘you-time’ after daily tasks.
We share how to find time for blogging and how to avoid burn-out:
Photography
The overall aesthetics of your blog is what tends to make a reader want to visit your site, and the photography aspect of blogging can be where you allow creative juices to flow.
If you take your own photos, try to set aside a few hours to take them in bulk. The morning of a weekend is ideal for this as it allows you to prepare for the upcoming week and enjoy the benefits of capturing natural light in your images, making them appear brighter without the need for further editing.
Stock images
If you don’t have time to take your own photos (or just aren’t as gifted as others!), there’s always the option for using stock images. This is the method we use here at Celebricious.
Unsplash and iStock are two of our preferred sites as they have a range of images that suit the overall aesthetic of our blog, but there are a number of free stock photo websites that can help to save time when blogging.
Keep a notebook
I’ve found that keeping a physical notebook is one of the ways where I can keep motivated and stay on track with my blog-related ‘to dos’.
Creating blog post titles is something that I do regularly, and use my notebook to write down some ideas that can be worked into future articles. You can also note any research that you find or keep clippings of magazines that you find interesting – it can help to save time when it actually comes to writing.
Write when you can
Got a train journey that’s lasting over an hour? Instead of killing that time listening to a podcast or reading a book, start making a start on a blog post. It can save you time when it comes to publishing.
Even if it’s just a 15 minute bus ride or a lunch break at work, write when you can. Even forming the bare bones of a post can allow you to flesh it out when you dedicate time to your blog, you’ll experience increased productivity and get more done.
Use scheduling tools
We all know that it’s probably impossible to spend a solid amount of time working on your blog and it’s hard to constantly be on-hand to catch readers who are looking for your blog.
Instead of stressing about appearing online 24/7, scheduling tools can be used to promote your posts throughout the day. Buffer is one of the most common social media schedulers and offers a free option to publish up to 10 tweets, and Facebook offers an unlimited amount for scheduled status updates.
The CMS system that your blog uses is also likely to offer scheduling tools for publishing posts. This can be configured in Blogger and WordPress towards to the right-hand side of the main post editor.
Making time for blogging is tricky but we’re sure that using these simple tips to help your blog feel less neglected when it comes to working and socialising.
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