3 super simple tips to get you blogging
In my day job as a content marketing trainer, I talk to a lot of Solopreneurs and small business owners about creating content for their business.
Blogging is a fantastic way for you to get your message out into the world, and do so in a way that supports you getting more traffic to your offers. Yet, so many people are not doing it — or rarely doing it.
Why? From what people tell me, this is largely an issue of overwhelm. They start out with good intentions, sit down at their desk, and then the blank Word doc totally freaks them out.
Ideas fly in from all angles, but are batted away just as quickly — dismissed as not being good enough.
So I’m here to tell you to relax. In my experience you are probably overthinking those ideas. We actually have a ton of good ideas every day, but we don’t give them the credit they are due.
Consider that while it’s true every idea out there has already been written about — nobody has written it in your voice. You have a unique take on the world and a unique angle on any idea.
So now we’ve got that square, let’s look at a few simple tips you can use to get yourself writing.
Save those ideas immediately
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love and Big Magic, talks about ideas in a way I really relate to.
“When an idea thinks it has found somebody — say, you — who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. It will try to get your attention. Mostly, you will not notice.”
She goes on to says that we need to take those ideas when they find us, otherwise they will find somebody else. In Big Magic she tells her story of losing a book idea to another writer because she didn’t act on that idea fast enough. It’s a story to really make you think, and Big Magic is one of my favorite books.
Ever since I read that book, I’ve made a point of always having notes on the go. I carry a notepad and use the notes app on my phone too — just to be safe!
In order to capture an idea for a blog post when it lands in its purest form — before we’ve overthought it and started to judge it — we need to just simply write it down in the form it came to us.
So that’s my first tip. Don’t let that idea escape!
Don’t chase your ideas away
I mentioned already how overthinking tends to scare a good idea off. We tell ourselves unhelpful things about how nobody will read our post, or how an idea isn’t strong enough to be written about.
You need to stop doing that to yourself. Have a little faith in your audience, as they do want to hear from you. That’s why they are your audience!
Also, it’s worth reminding yourself that not everybody you know is your audience, and you are not writing to please everybody. That’s just impossible. So when you sit down at your laptop, forget about what a few judgmental people might think of your point of view. Write for yourself, and the right people will follow you.
Structure your work
Do you remember learning essay writing at school? I remember being taught to structure my essay in this format:
- Introduction — tell them what you’re going to tell them.
- Main body — tell them what you want to tell them.
- Summary — tell them what you told them.
Simple, right? Well the same can be applied to a good blog post too. This simple structure makes writing flow in the right direction, and it’s therefore easier to read.
In addition to this, the best blog posts have the main body of text broken up into smaller segments with either sub headings or bullet points. This keeps the whole blog post digestible and prevents overwhelm for both the reader and the writer.
If you struggle to get a blog post out of your head and onto paper, then try sketching out your structure first, then just fleshing it out with words. Before you know it, the whole draft will be written and ready for you to proof read and polish up.
If you’d like to have the structure ready made for you, there is a handy blog post template (with instructions and an example) in my Content Creation Handbook — along with other resources to make your life a bit easier!
I hope you found this helpful. Above all, just remember to be kind to yourself. There is plenty of room in the world for your content, so don’t be shy about sharing it. Getting started really is the hardest part, so grab your notebook and just start.
