I know I need to be blogging for my business, but I just can’t find the time.
I hear you, guys. Really I do. Even though we ghost blog for a living here at Roundpeg, it can still be hard for our crew to find time to feed our own blog. It’s no mystery as to why: Clients come first, right? Why spend time on a “non-revenue generating activity” when you could be making your clients happy?
It’s not a question of either/or. It can’t be. And as for blogging being a non-revenue activity, that’s a blog post for another day. But the fact of the matter is, blogging is important. It boosts SEO, feeds social media, informs your clients and prospects and establishes your expertise, to name but a few benefits. And if you really believe it’s important, you’ll find the time.
Here are a few tips we’ve found over the years to make blogging on a frequent, consistent basis a little easier to manage:
- Schedule it. If you don’t make time for blogging, it’s not going to happen. There will always be something more pressing or something you’d just plain rather do. So make an appointment with yourself, put it on your calendar, and stick to it like you would a meeting with an important client. Find out what works for you–some people prefer to write one blog post at a time. Me? I prefer to set aside a few hours and bust out mass quantities of blogs. For me, it’s easier to enter a zone of concentration. This is my second blog post for Roundpeg today, and I hope to get a couple more done before I call it quits. Find the rhythm that works with you, set a date with yourself and see that you keep it.
- Reduce, reuse, recycle. Think about all the things you write in a day. How many emails do you write to customers or prospects, explaining some finer point of your business or addressing some common concern? How many of those emails are explaining the same point over and over again? Make life easy for yourself–take that explanation and make it into a blog post. Not only will you kill two birds with one stone by both writing a client email and a blog post, you’ll also be able to direct future questions to the same blog post. More productivity now, more productivity in the future. Win-win.
- Ask for help. While your voice does need to be the dominant one on your blog, you absolutely should be asking your strategic allies, friends, vendors and clients to guest blog. Why? Not only does it flatter them (and they’re likely to return the favor), it allows you to cover a broad range of content, create valuable links back to their websites and strengthen your relationships with these important groups. Ask customers for testimonials and use them as blog posts–not only will you get to publish people saying glowing things about you, testimonials also tend to be naturally chock-full of valuable keywords to help you claw your way up Google’s rankings.
Everyone’s blogging process and path are different, and you’ll have to find your own. But try using these tips to increase your blogging productivity. Get started!